


Skylark 22

by BirchBow (chaoticTenebrism), LaughingStones



Category: Motorcity
Genre: Amnesia, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Cyborg Chuck (motorcity), Cyborgs, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, Explicit But Complicated Consent, Found Family, Friend to Strangers to Lovers to Friends, Gee Chuck How Come Your Boss Lets You Have TWO HUNDRED DADS, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Multi, Past Sexual Abuse, Rayon: Also It Turns Out This Bot Is Actually A Good And Soft Boy, Rayon: And If Anybody Hurts Him I Will Do A Violence, Rayon: I'm A Cool And Morally Grey Gang Boss Don't Fuck With Me, The rough stuff is referenced most in the first chapter, You got it folks I'm back on my bullshit, the ones afterward are mostly, who are also lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2020-05-20
Packaged: 2020-09-27 15:37:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 61,483
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20410168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaoticTenebrism/pseuds/BirchBow, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaughingStones/pseuds/LaughingStones
Summary: Rayon considers himself a steady boss with strong principles and a good handle on his emotions, which is why he has a few set-in-stone rules for himself.  Never accept a gift without knowing where the strings are attached.  Stay out of other peoples' business and don't let them get involved in yours.   Don't make deals with the Duke of Detroit unless you have to.  Make your decisions with a clear head, not based on snap emotions.  And don't get attached.He's about to break every single one of those rules.





	1. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please make sure you read the warnings! Everybody who has sex on-screen is overage and consenting, but their ability to consent is impaired by a lack of information and technological pseudo-mind-control, respectively. If that's a problem for you, please take care of yourself!

Rayon is not the Duke's biggest fan, but he has to admit the man knows how to put on a party. The music is pretty good, since the Duke's not singing himself, the guests are dressed to the nines, the food is tasty and the drinks are potent. Rayon even managed to distract the Duke's Number Two for a little while with some gossip before her big baby of an employer decided he wasn't being waited on enough and called her away.

He talks business with a couple folks, exchanges mostly-friendly barbs with Foxy, and he's on his way to get something else to eat when the tall white kid serving the drinks gets stopped near him.

“Well, aren't you dressed to impress,” says the guest, an older guy with a mohawk and a silk shirt, one hand on the kid’s elbow. “And he says you're a _bot?_”

Rayon gave the server a brief once-over when he came in, then rolled his eyes a little at the Duke’s taste in fashion and moved on for the night—at that, he pauses to look the server over more carefully. Boy looks maybe nineteen, twenty. There's a lot of pale, freckled skin on display, since the jacket he's wearing mostly consists of a pair of sleeves with as little other fabric as possible. He's got short blond hair and shoulders that hunch nervously and big, anxious blue-green eyes.

He’s also wearing a collar, and thin gold cuffs on his wrists with rubies set in them. They looked like extra bling from the brief, across-the-room glance Rayon gave him, but now that the server is nearby and facing him, he can see they’re attached to the collar by red hard-light cords. They’ve got just enough slack to let him serve drinks or hold a tray, but not much more than that.

Rayon's eyes narrow behind his shades.

The kid sure doesn't _look_ like a bot. If he is, there’s nothing to worry about, but if he’s not, and if those cuffs and that collar aren’t just decorative—

Then those blue eyes flash briefly, lighting up from behind.

“Y-yes s-s-sir,” the server stammers in a high, soft voice. “The D-D-Duke rescued me from De—from D—f-from from Deluxe.”

“You don't _look_ like a bot,” the guest says, looking him over with arched brows.

“I'm an an-an-android,” the server says, and shifts his tray of drinks to one hand, holding the other up. Rayon's own brows rise, because the last couple fingers on his left hand are mangled or missing entirely, and the mangling shows a hard, silvery surface where bone and flesh should be, gleaming where flawless human-looking skin was stripped away. “I was. Broken. He f-f— He fixed, he repaired me.”

Well. That is pretty persuasive. Rayon shakes his head to himself as he moves on, doing his best to shake the sight of those stripped, skinless fingers from his mind. Bot or not, Rayon’s not tacky enough to go ogle his mutilations or the cheap, glittery, decorative way the Duke has dressed him. Besides, the concept of an android that convincing puts Rayon on edge. He doesn’t like not being able to trust his own senses, and everything about the guy looks and sounds human except that strange, glitching stutter, the glowing eyes and the flashes of metal under his skin. Deluxe tech, man, it’s something else.

He gets himself some tiny sandwiches and things, wondering what 'rescued from Deluxe’ actually means. There's no way the Duke went up there, so he must've gotten his hands on the kid—the bot—down here. Maybe when he got left behind by some Elite troop, or could be a refugee smuggled him down and the Duke just stole him. It'd be about his style.

Rayon munches on hors d'oeuvres for a while, considering, and then gives up and heads back in the direction of the bot. It would still be tacky to ogle, so he’s not going to—but he does have some questions he’d like answered, and it seems only right for him to go ask the bot face to face, not go over his head to the Duke.

The guest who was questioning the bot has moved on, but the server is still there, talking to a heavyset white guy—or being talked at by him, more like. His body language is pretty clearly not welcoming, arms crossed protectively over his mostly bare chest, shoulders tight and drawn in. His tray is set down on a nearby table, and as Rayon comes close enough to listen, frowning, the guy talking to him steps further into his space, trapping the bot between him and the table's edge.

“—Why he’d get you dressed up like this if he didn’t put you out here to be some kinda _party favor_,” the man is saying, grinning. The bot opens his mouth, but the guy is already stepping closer again, reaching around to get a rough handful of the server’s ass. Rayon frowns, shoulders tensing. Copping a feel on the serving staff—well, that’s... _classy. _

It would be one thing if the bot was even pretending to be into it, but he jerks when he’s touched, face going pink, twitching like he wants to shake the hand off. “No,” he says, high and urgent, “you you ha-have to a-a-ask have to—”

“I don't think a bot has any business telling me what I ‘h-h-h- _have to’_ do,” the man says, squeezing his handful. His other hand lifts to the server's still-stammering mouth and pushes two fingers inside. The bot’s cheeks turn a darker pink and he whimpers, his hips twitching. In those tight pants he's wearing, his reaction is immediately obvious.

“I can think of better stuff for you to do with your mouth than bossing people around,” the man says, and Rayon's lips tighten in disgust. Even if the server’s a bot, he’s obviously got enough A.I. going on to say “no”, and Rayon’s not in the business of watching people get groped. Plus...really? The man's using a line that bad?

“Evening,” Rayon says, stepping over. He tilts his head a little at the man, unsmiling, watches recognition come into his face, followed by reluctant uncertainty. He works for the Mama’s Boys, Rayon is pretty sure—not even a full member, and he's got to know that basically every person at this party outranks him, but a top tier gang leader most definitely so.

“I think you got somewhere else you gotta be right now,” Rayon suggests.

The man lets go of the server, fists clenching at his sides. For a moment he thinks about throwing a punch, Rayon can see it in his eyes. Rayon stays right where he is, doesn’t even acknowledge the threat, just lets his mouth curve up at one corner. He'd like to see the big lunk try it. He might have muscle on Rayon, but that won't do much against speed and skill.

Muttering something under his breath, the man turns on his heel and sulks off. The server lets out a shaky breath and stares at Rayon, freckled cheeks still flushed.

“...Thank you,” he says, quiet and simple, and unfolds just a little. Wipes his mouth with a trembling hand, swallowing.

He looks, he acts so human. Rayon’s eyes drop to that mangled hand again. Blue light glints over the exposed silver in a steady pulse, tracing the same path over and over in a rhythm like a heartbeat.

“Least I could do,” Rayon says smoothly. “Some people never got the hang of manners. What were you tryin’ to say?”

The server swallows again, wide blue eyes faintly pulsing with the same rhythmic glow for a moment. “You, it’s, anyone who wa-w-w-wants, anybody, permission to p-play with me, has t-to has t—ha-has t-t-to ask the D-Duke. Permission.”

Rayon's brows lift again. Well, looks like the Mama's Boy was right and the Duke did dress his bot that way on purpose. Still doesn’t mean the guy had the right to go groping around where he wasn’t wanted, but it does put a pretty nice load of that onus squarely on the Duke’s head as well. If he was gonna send the bot out dressed like this, it’s on him to make sure nobody gets handsy with the guy unless he’s into it.

“...That so,” Rayon says slowly, a second late. “He's gonna let the folks here play with you? He's not usually the type to share his toys.”

He half expects an offended look or a sly smile, but the bot doesn't even react to being called a toy, just drops his eyes and stammers, low-voiced, “H-he likes, display, like, to put, likes sh-showing-ing them showing them off, though.”

That's true. Rayon considers, looking the kid over. He's got the gangly, raw-boned look of a young man not quite grown into himself yet; tall, lean, thin enough to look more gangly than elegant. It’s an interesting choice for an android, but—it’s not like he’s bad to look at, either. Somebody’s put a slightly tasteless amount of eye makeup on him, although it doesn’t look like any effort has been made to hide the fading layer of bruises along his slim throat. Nice mouth, pretty eyes, good jawline. It would be more Rayon’s speed if they designed him looking closer to forty than twenty, but to his surprise he finds he’s thinking about it.

Of course, the bot’s also huddled in on himself, broadcasting anxious shyness in every line of him, and the thought of cutting him loose and sending him back out into the party to get ogled and groped some more is...less than appealing. _Shy_, for god’s sake. There’s no reason to program that into him—at least not one Deluxe would’ve seen—so his A.I. must have developed on its own, maybe in a direction it wasn't supposed to. It's obviously pretty advanced.

“And what do _you _think about gettin’ played with?” Rayon says, half testing, half curious.

The bot’s eyes snap up to Rayon's face, wide and startled. “What do I—error,” he says, twitching faintly as his eyes flash and dim again. “Invalid inq-inquiry, e-e-error.”

“Hm,” Rayon says. “Yeah, I bet it is.” The Duke sure wouldn't give a damn what a bot thinks, even one with good enough A.I. to count as a person. For all Rayon knows, he's made it so the bot can't _have_ opinions, or can't admit to them if he does. Wouldn't want his toy trying to tell him ‘no’.

“You like bein’ his bot?”

The bot goes very still. “Yes,” he says, a little too loud, eyes even wider than they were. Rayon's never seen a bot look terrified before. He's not a fan.

Interesting that the bot can lie, although it's probably easier when it's been previously programmed into him. No way the Duke wouldn't make sure his bot knew exactly how he was supposed to answer questions like that.

Rayon tries to soften his voice some. Even if the kid's just a bot, it doesn't feel right to scare him for nothing. “Hey, it's cool. You weren’t into that guy I scared off, were you?”

“E-error,” the bot mumbles, but his head jerks at the same time, half a headshake.

Rayon's eyebrows rise. _Very_ interesting. “You’re supposed to tell ‘em to ask the Duke,” he says, “...But you’re not allowed to do anything about it if they ain’t listening, is that it?”

The bot twitches, a little pained, a little relieved. “...They, they’re...guests. My Duke’s guests,” he mumbles, and squirms a little, resettling his jacket on his shoulders uneasily like he’s trying to cover the bare expanse of his chest and stomach. “That would be, I can’t be r— I can’t, offend…”

“Well, there’s a couple folks at this party who’d give you a better night than that big lug,” says Rayon, with one last considering glance at the way the bot’s collarbones flex, the delicate arch of his throat. “Can’t imagine any of them would say ‘no’ if you wanted to pick one of ‘em. You see anybody here you’d like to play with more?”

He’s already running through a couple ideas in his head, considering the crowd, but when he looks back at the bot, those blue eyes haven’t left Rayon’s face. He licks his lips, meets Rayon’s eyes and immediately goes deep pink, eyes sticking. It seems to take him a minute to look away. For a breath or two Rayon thinks he's not gonna answer at all, and then his mouth opens and closes again. It takes him a few tries to get anything out, and when he finally does it's just one word, shaky and quiet.

“_Please?_” he whispers.

Hot damn. If that was programmed in, it's a hell of a tactic. Even knowing he’s a bot and he's probably not capable of actually _wanting _ anyone, it still sends a flare of heat through Rayon.

He studies the bot a minute longer, interest thoroughly secured, and then sighs to himself. He's gonna do it, he's gonna go poking his nose in where he's got no business and probably regret it, but—he has to break his own rules sometimes. Keeps life interesting.

“Alright, kid,” he says, “let's go see the Duke.”

“Rayon, my man!” the Duke says when they reach him. Behind his ridiculous red shades, his eyes flick from Rayon to the bot hunching half a step behind him, and a broad smile spreads across his face. In a single too-fast movement, he’s spinning past Rayon and wrapping a long arm around the bot’s hunched shoulders, pulling him in close. “Do I understand that your _stellar_ taste has led you to want a _taste_ of my pet bot here?”

Rayon hides his annoyance in a slow blink behind his own shades. The man is so _tacky_. His complete lack of class always rubs Rayon the wrong way.

“Maybe,” Rayon says, cool and calm, and nothing more. His policy is generally to encourage the Duke as little as possible.

“_Maybe?!_” the Duke exclaims, and hooks his fingers through the bot’s collar, pulling him upright. The other hand slides under the hem of the too-small jacket, and the bot stiffens up and makes a muffled noise, color flooding over his pale cheeks as the Duke plucks a nail at one pierced nipple. The Duke tilts his head forward and smirks at Rayon over the top of his glasses. “Hwell! _Clearly_ it's up to me to explain to you the many _perks _of this _generous _one-time offer.”

“...M-m-my Duke,” whispers the bot, barely audible. His face is bright red, now, his eyes flicker around the crowd of party-goers. The curious eyes on them. The Duke glances over at him, out at the party, and then very deliberately gives the nipple he’s playing with a mean, sharp pinch. The bot jerks, eyes snapping wide, and a filthy little whimpering gasp makes it out before he manages to bite his lip, muffling himself. Goddamn, that A.I. is _something. _Annoyance aside, that responsiveness is starting to look more and more appealing. But he’s obviously not crazy about the idea of doing this here in front of everybody, and with the way the Duke tends to play, Rayon can’t really blame him. If this is happening, better to take it elsewhere.

“This baby gets the Duke Guarantee,” the Duke is bragging—has been, probably. Rayon isn’t really listening. “For example, he can—”

“Save it,” Rayon cuts him off, “I'd rather find out for myself.”

—

It’s a sign of just how much the Duke wants to show off his new toy that he doesn’t even try to haggle a price out of Rayon—in fact, he’s every inch an unctuous host, pointing them to the second-biggest bedroom in the mansion. Which, he assures Rayon on the way there, “is fully equipped for whatever you could possibly want to do to this cute piece of ass.” The Duke’s not watching, but Rayon catches the movement out of the corner of his eye as the bot shakes and shivers for a second, eyes flicking up to his owner’s back and then away again. Whatever he’s thinking about, though, he doesn’t voice it.

“—And of course, nobody knows this long, lean machine like I do, so if you need any _tips_—”

“I think I can _figure it out,_” Rayon says coolly, and the Duke snorts and rolls his eyes so dramatically behind his shades, it moves his whole upper body. “I’m sure you wanna get back to your party.”

“With this baby out on his first test drive?” The Duke’s hand snakes out and grabs the back of the kid’s neck, shaking him a little bit—he flinches, but a second later he’s definitely leaning into the touch, pressing back like he can’t get enough. Rayon spares a second to frown vaguely, but he’s more concerned with the familiar, shit-eating grin on the Duke’s face. The look of a man who knows he’s about to get away with something. “I think I’m gonna need to keep an eye on that, don’t you?”

Oh. _Oh, _is that how he thinks this is gonna go?

“I don't think that'll be necessary,” Rayon says in his best deceptively mild tone, and holds the Duke's gaze when he peers over his shades again.

The Duke looks briefly disgruntled, then sniffs and looks away. “I suppose I don't need to be in the room, if you’re gonna be _squeamish _about it. But I _will_ be keeping an eye on things from a distance—that's non-negotiable. You know how important my things are to me.” He grabs the bot’s ass, squeezes and kneads as the bot whimpers and gasps, stumbling like his knees almost gave out.

“And you know _I'm_ not the guy who doesn't take care of other people's things,” Rayon says more sharply. He's about to tell the Duke to take his damn spy cams and stuff them, when the bot catches his eye. Still flushed red, he gives Rayon an unmistakably pleading look, and dammit, what's he supposed to do at that point? It’s not like the Duke hasn’t seen it all before, on one or two occasions of incredibly unfortunate drunken oversight.

“...Fine,” Rayon says shortly. “Knock yourself out.”

“_Excellent_,” the Duke says, and whirls to a stop in front of a closed door. “Here you are, my man, I'm sure you'll enjoy your stay.” He turns to the bot and raises a screen, types a few things in rapidfire. To Rayon's surprise, the hard-light cords between the bot’s cuffs and collar flicker out. It doesn't seem to make the bot relax, though; his shoulders are tense and he's breathing too fast, wide eyes fixed on the Duke as he continues to type. When the Duke hits the final key with an ostentatious flourish, the bot jerks all over and lets out a shuddering little noise, breathing catching.

“As a last demonstration of my hospitality,” the Duke says, dismissing the screen with one hand while the other reels in the bot, “observe.” He tugs the bot back against him, facing Rayon, and puts a hand on that pale bare stomach, hooking his chin over the bot’s shoulder. The bot moans soft and breathy like that hand is touching something else altogether, his blush spreading rapidly down his neck. When Rayon looks closer, the pupils in those blue eyes are expanding into black pools, so far dilated the iris is barely a bright, flashing thread around them.

Rayon glances back up at the Duke, hiding the unnerved twist of his gut behind a blankly raised eyebrow, and the Duke raises an eyebrow right back and slides his hand down, idly rubbing at the hard-on trapped in the bot’s tight pants. The bot arches against him with a squeaky little whimper, lips going slack and eyes fluttering most of the way closed. The Duke grins smugly and tugs at one pierced nipple, and the sweet little cry the bot lets out makes Rayon breathe in slow through his nose. He's not sixteen anymore, far from it, but god_damn_.

Another rub, another tweak, and the bot is spasming, hands clawing at thin air as he shivers and cries out, hips bucking. The way he's reacting, Rayon kind of expects him to come in his pants, but he doesn't, just keeps whimpering and making little pleading sounds and writhing under the Duke's hands. It keeps looking like he's about a touch away from orgasm, but apparently it's a deceptive look.

Makes Rayon kind of curious what it'll take to actually get him there.

“Thanks for the rundown,” he says dryly. “I'll take it from here.”

“Of course!” the Duke says, and lets go of the bot abruptly. The kid moans, quiet and devastated, and then squeaks again as the Duke spins out in front of him instead, grabs him by the jaw and pulls him close. “Now, you _are_ going to behave for this gentleman, aren't you? You wouldn't want to damage my _sterling_ reputation, after all!”

The threat is clear and hard under the words, and the bot flinches from them like the Duke slapped him. “No,” he says, slurred and stuttering, stumbling over himself as the words force their way out too fast. “No I’m no Duke my Duke yes, I’ll, I, I, I’ll be g-good.”

“Oh, I _know _you will,” says the Duke, and pulls away with a sharp swat to the bot’s ass that makes him squeak again and stumble forward. He comes within inches of slamming into Rayon, barely catches himself and stares up at Rayon’s face with those strange, wide, pleading eyes.

He looks scared enough, it seems like it should be taking the edge off the arousal—but he’s still definitely hard, hips shivering and twitching faintly like he wants to press closer.

“..._Please_,” he says again, very quiet, voice barely catching.

“Yeah, alright,” Rayon says, cool for the Duke’s benefit, and puts a firm hand on the back of the bot’s neck, steering him toward the door. “Duke, ain’t you got somewhere to be?”

“I _certainly _do,” the Duke purrs, and stalks away down the hall. Rayon frowns after him for a second, lip curling, and then looks away, rolling his eyes. The longer he sees the Duke around this guy, the less he likes it. The Duke's always pushy and demanding, running roughshod over people's boundaries, but when somebody’s not allowed to even _have _ boundaries, Rayon can only imagine what kind of bullshit the Duke would pull. No wonder the bot’s so flinchy.

“Bad luck,” he mutters, and the bot twitches and glances up at him, eyes widening. “...Working for him.”

The bot’s face twitches, his throat works like he’s swallowing. “I,” he says, still hoarse and breathless with arousal, more cautious now. “I-I… My Duke is, is, D-Duke is very good, good, good, good, good to _error_ —ah, t-to me.” He shuts his mouth sharply, takes a deep breath, and this time when he raises his eyes to Rayon’s face he looks almost shy again, less scared and more hopeful. Absently, Rayon notices those dark eyes are almost on a level with his, and if the bot straightened up he'd probably be the same height.

The kid's tongue flicks out, wets his lips—do androids get dry mouths?—and it’s definitely not Rayon’s imagination when he leans just a little bit onto Rayon’s hand on his neck. “I’ll be,” he says earnestly, chokes on the words, tries again. “Please, I’ll. Be good. F-f-for—you...?”

“I bet you will be,” Rayon says, amusement mixed with something sharper he refuses to look at too hard. He squeezes the hand on the kid's neck, throws the door open and guides him inside.

It's not a bad room. Not Rayon's taste in decor, but definitely gilded to the nines and furnished with just about any type of furniture a man could want. There’s a gilded and ostentatiously huge bottle of lube on the bedside table—ah. At least three-quarters of the way empty. Well then. Rayon would never invite a guest into a room with _used _amenities, but arrogant braggarts with too much money go for a different atmosphere, he supposes. Less… “classy motel” and more “cheap brothel”.

Rayon may or may not have a _lot_ of thoughts about the Duke’s interior design choices—which he will never share, because however obnoxious the man is, Rayon doesn’t need the Duke’s goons on his tail. No point in making enemies over bad taste, no matter how messy the man’s guest rooms are.

He lets go of the bot’s neck when he steps in, and the bot lingers next to him for a second, like he’s waiting for orders, then takes a few halting steps forward toward the bed. When Rayon doesn’t stop him, he keeps going—dragging one leg a little bit, but striding long on those long, slim legs—and sits carefully down on the edge of the bed, hands on his knees.

“...Are you gonna get undressed?” Rayon says, almost amused. The bot stares at his face, eyes dark and bleary but desperately focused, and then raises a hand very slowly to his jacket.

“I… y-yes?” he says, like he’s guessing.

“You don’t want to?”

“I do!” the bot says hurriedly. “S-sorry, I’m, I, sorry. I d-d-d-d— _hh_, I didn’t have o-orders, I’m, I’ll, be—”

“Be good,” Rayon finishes for him. “I know.”

“Do you…” It seems to take a lot of concentration for the kid to talk clearly—he stops, breathes, going really slow, eyes squeezed shut as he focuses. “Do. You w-want. To, to see. Me? S-s-sir?”

What, see him naked? Rayon didn’t figure he’d have to specify, especially considering the kind of clothes the Duke apparently likes to dress his bot in—but maybe that’s just part of the program, the whole sweet, responsive, questioning thing. “Yeah,” Rayon says. “How about you show me what we’re working with, huh?”

Whatever dilemma the bot was stuck on, that seems to solve it. He nods, pushes himself up—another wince, there’s _definitely _something wrong with that leg—and lets the jacket fall off his shoulders, baring pale collarbones, a long, slim neck. Toys with the button of those stupidly tight pants and then glances up from under his lashes, chews on his lip, and—oh. That kind of “see”.

Rayon sits himself down on the bed and watches. It’s not the smoothest strip show he's ever been to, or the most experienced, but there’s definitely something weirdly charming about the way the bot hesitates before he bares skin, almost bashful. Especially in light of the familiar way the Duke touched him, and that mostly-empty bottle on the table. Kid’s got no business giving Rayon those big, shy doe eyes when he’s probably had more sex than any two of Rayon’s men put together.

Still, even the slight awkwardness doesn't do much to diminish the sight of all that flushed, freckled skin being slowly bared, the bruises and hickies tracking down the bot’s skinny hips and collarbones. He’s still hard as hell, but his hands barely hesitate near his dick—in fact, if anything, he tugs them away like he’s afraid his own skin is going to burn him.

He bundles the jacket up in both hands once he’s naked, not hiding behind it but clinging to it with both hands like he just wants something to hold onto. It’s a strange combination of endearing and… Rayon's not sure, that sharp-edged feeling not quite as easy to ignore now.

He's a bot, an android, this should be a pretty clear-cut interaction here. Except for that A.I. of his, except for the way his emotions show so clear and persuasively human on his face, except for the way he looked at Rayon and said _please_.

Makes perfect sense, he tells himself firmly, Rayon's a good-looking guy. Treated him better than the others at the party did, and he knew he was going to get played with so he wanted to take the best possible option. Nothing else to it, and no need for further complications. The bot’s cute and naked, that's enough.

He tilts his head, pulling off his shades to set on the bedside table, and gives the bot a little edge of a smile. “Good with your hands, huh? How about you get over here and help me out?” He tugs his tie looser in illustration.

“Oh,” says the bot, small and breathless, and edges closer cautiously. Settles down on the bed, reaching out, and pulls tentatively at the tie. His hands are trembling as it comes loose—his fingertips brush Rayon’s collarbone, and then jerk away like he’s not sure if that’s allowed.

“Should I? All, all of, should I take… all of…?”

Rayon thinks about getting naked for all of a second and then considers who's undoubtedly watching this show by now. “Nah, just get the buttons open,” he says, and shrugs his suit jacket off, tossing it safely to the other side of the bed. “You can touch,” he adds as the bot starts undoing a button, carefully pulling the shirt away from Rayon's skin. “Touchin’s kinda the whole point.”

The bot gives him a look so intensely dubious it’s almost funny. Then his eyes flicker back to the undone top button of Rayon’s shirt, and he licks his lips again. “Touch,” he repeats, real quietly, like he’s talking to himself more than anything. He reaches out again, flicks another button open—a deft, fast movement, at odds with the way he’s been jittering and trembling—and slips just the tips of his fingers through to touch the thin, knotted line of scar tissue where somebody caught Rayon with a knife once. Up to the side of his throat, still so light it almost tickles. There’s something about the way he’s staring—focused on his hands, watching himself touch—that feels almost...hungry. Longing.

If this is going to turn into one of those navel-gazey e-novels about androids who just want to be Real Boys, Rayon is outta here. He is not putting up with that tonight.

“More like this,” he says, and strokes a hand down the bot’s chest and up again to demonstrate. “This okay?” And there he goes, treating this like an encounter with a shy virgin when that's way off in like five different ways. Whatever, he can't help it. The kid doesn't act like a jaded sexbot, Rayon can't treat him like one.

Besides, it seems to be working out just fine. The bot is immediately distracted as soon as Rayon’s hand touches his skin, pushing up into the touch in sharp little twitches and jerks. His hands falter and lose all that coordination and grace, going shaky and weak again.

“Yes,” the bot says, seconds late. “Y-yes, yes yes yes yes yes—please, yes m-more—_nnh—_”

...There’s gotta be a dial somewhere for this bot’s responsiveness and sensitivity, and wherever it is, the Duke has found it, cranked it up to 11 and broken the goddamn knob off. The bot’s dick is flushed deep, urgent-looking pink, slick at the tip, and he already looks about two seconds from falling apart again just from the hand touching his chest.

It’s… kind of strange, though, almost unnerving, how brief his distraction is, how fast he focuses again despite being incredibly turned on. His eyes are still fixed on his hand, the fingertips pressed to the slice of skin visible through Rayon’s collar. Even while the rest of him is racked by endless, urgent little shivers of need, he can’t seem to look away.

Which is fine, not like Rayon's going to complain about the appreciation, but there's a time for foreplay and a time to get down to business, and no need to make the kid wait. Even if he's not as young as he looks like, given the way he's programmed he shouldn't take long to get up again.

There’s no way Rayon’s using somebody else’s half-used lube, but fortunately he’s always believed in being prepared. He pulls a packet of lube out of his inside jacket pocket, slicks his hand up deftly and gets hold of the bot’s dick, stroking slow and firm.

The results are...startling. The bot squeaks, which Rayon kind of expected, but he’s not expecting the kid to jump so hard he almost slides off the mattress. His head snaps back like Rayon’s hand is a live wire on his skin. “_Oh,_” he says, startled and loud and shaky, and then “Ah_ah, _hh_ah_, oh, p-p-please, not, please not yet, _ff—_ha—_o-overload er-er-error—_”

If he was desperate before he’s _frantic _now, every muscle in his body taut. His hips don’t even thrust into Rayon’s hand as it stops dead, even though muscles flutter and twitch in his belly and his thighs with the effort of holding still. “Not yet,” he sobs again, and it _is _a sob, even though there’s no sign of tears on his face. “Not yet I’ll be good I’ll be be be be I’ll be good, please! Let—please lllllllet me, sir let me, _you_, I’ll, wh-whatever you _god _what—want—”

_Christ_ . Rayon pulls his hand away, staring. “Okay,” he says as calmly as he can when he's—_shaken_, he'll admit it. What the hell has the Duke been _doing_ to this kid?

The bot said _more_, Rayon figured—but he should've asked. Made assumptions, forgot the way the Duke works. He might have put all kinds of nasty little things in his pet bot’s programming, and none of it would be about making the kid feel good. Gotta remember that, gotta be careful with him.

“Got it,” he says, casual but meeting the bot’s eyes, trying to let him see Rayon means it. “I’m not here to do stuff you don’t want, you just gotta let me know. I don't know the rules, here.”

“Rules,” the bot says. “My, my, my rules?” His eyes flash blue again, flickering and dim now. “H-ahh, uh. Ask, don’t move don’t—_touch_, don’t m-move. Don’t touch your, yourself, never, don’t, _ever_. Don’t don’t don’t don’t cry don’t move, baby, don’t whine, don’t. Hhh, don’t get needy. Don’t get greedy. Don’t ask. Ask. A-a-a-a-ask, ask to ask to ask to ask to ask to—”

“Okay,” Rayon says, cutting off the speech loop. “I get it.” He narrows his eyes at the bot, thinking. “You're here with _me_, right now, so. I want you movin’, and touchin’, and makin’ noise, and tellin’ me when you want something.” What the hell is the point of sex if your partner can't show you how good you’re blowing their mind? He’d write it off as the Duke not being concerned with the bot enjoying himself, but he obviously did _something _specifically to make sure he’d go to pieces over every little touch, so it’s...what, just the power trip?

...God, the Duke is such a damn weirdo when he’s allowed to do whatever he wants in the bedroom. He didn’t try to push too hard when they hooked up, years back, but he knows better than to push, with Rayon. Rayon can get up and walk out. A bot, though, has no choice which weird idiosyncrasies he humors. Poor bastard.

The bot hasn’t answered yet, looks uncertain and kind of hopeful, but mostly just nervous. Rayon raises his eyebrows, questioning. “You think you can do that? Ignore those rules tonight?” Rayon's got to be able to contradict his usual orders, it wouldn't make sense to hand the bot over to him and expect Rayon to want all the same stuff the Duke wants… except this is the Duke, with the garish decor and the used lube bottle, and a fucking tank that fires limos. What makes sense to Rayon could be miles off. And by the amount of lube left in that bottle he’s been playing with this kid a _lot, _for quite a while.

Right. Well, that's why Rayon’s asking.

“Yes,” says the bot immediately. He doesn’t look sure, but he sounds… almost desperate, and he’s nodding fast and hopeful now. “Can, I can, I’ll b-b-be good. I’ll tr—I’ll. Do that. C-can I—_please_—can I have. I, I, I, I need you, your—_ahhh, _error—p-please, fuck. Me. Please please please—” And his hand inches slowly up Rayon’s thigh, reaching hopefully for his fly.

Rayon swallows, breaking free from the brief startled paralysis. Goddamn, he just can't predict this kid at all. Shy and scared one second and eager and thirsty the next one. “Yeah,” he says, voice a little rougher than usual. “Yeah, all right, let's go.”

He gets his shirt the rest of the way unbuttoned while the bot scrambles to undo Rayon's belt and get his pants open. Damn if it isn't distracting in the best way to see how hungry he is to get his hands on Rayon's dick.

Not just his hands, either, it turns out. For a second it looks like he’s just gonna reach out and grab, but he stops himself just in time, works his hands and makes a tiny, conflicted whimpering noise in the back of his throat. “D-d-dry,” he mumbles, and glances up hopefully. “Can I—have—?”

Rayon blinks at him, glances at the lube. No way it's out of reach, the kid's got long arms—oh. Ask for everything, right. “Yeah,” he says, “go ahead.”

...Except instead of reaching for the lube, the kid scoots back on the bed, licks his lips again and then doubles down and slides Rayon’s entire dick into his mouth in one smooth shot. No hesitation, no gagging, barely a twitch as it hits the back of his throat.

Rayon loses his breath, hips twitching as he controls himself not to thrust, although with the skills the bot has programmed in, it might not even be a problem if he did. Wouldn't make sense to give an android a gag reflex, he's pretty sure.

“Damn,” he says, a little breathless. “Nice.” He rests one hand on the back of the kid’s head, idly ruffling the short blond hair. With the bot’s mouth on his dick Rayon can feel the way he moans at that; with that much bare, freckled skin in his lap, he can see the way the words make the bot shiver, back arching, goosebumps rising briefly on the back of his neck and his bare shoulders. The approval seems to work on him almost as much as the touch does, and he leans into both, moving easier now, long, practiced movements. Not trying to get Rayon off, just a leisurely build of pleasure.

Rayon keeps stroking his hair, ruffling back and forth. “You're good at this, huh. Good with your hands, good with your mouth. Goddamn, check you out.”

No one would accuse Rayon of being the chattiest guy around, but he knows how to talk, what to say, when he wants to. He murmurs little compliments and encouragement and the bot keeps moaning, twitching, pressing up into his hand and down onto his dick again. That responsiveness, even to words, is something else.

It takes the bot a long minute to pull away again, gasping in rough breaths, eyes watering and cheeks flushed. Licks his lips and moans like he loves the taste. Glances up hopefully, shy and eager.

“Yeah,” Rayon tells him, and he can't help the slight, almost affectionate smile. “You did good. What do you want, you wanna ride me? You want me on top?” Maybe the kid's just a sexbot, but that sure as hell doesn't mean Rayon can't give him a good time.

“_Oh_,” says the bot, almost awed. “Y-y-yes, I want, yes, that.” And then, apparently realizing minutes late that there was a choice in there, “...Wh-when, my Duke, when he—it’s, good—” he catches himself, looking almost embarrassed, almost panicky. “I, I, I mean, all of, it’s, all—”

Rayon raises a slightly impatient eyebrow. The bot catches the look, winces and pushes past the glitch with a visible effort. “Sssorry,” he says, and pushes himself up on his knees, crawling up the bed. Braces his hands on the headboard and shuffles his knees apart, glancing back over his shoulder. “If it’s, if, okay, with you. My, my, my, my—sir.”

Damn if that isn't an enticing sight. Rayon licks his lips, moving over behind the kid. “That's just fine by me,” he says, and puts a hand on one pale hip, waits a beat before sliding it down over the smooth curves of his ass, just touching for a start. Testing, checking that there's no unexpected reactions here, no sudden panic or distress. The bot catches his breath, arches into the touch and mumbles a slurred, wanton mess of _yes _and _ah _and _please sir please_. Nice, good, alright.

Rayon slips a finger down the cleft of his ass and strokes a little circle over soft skin. Sexbots don't self-lube, apparently, because fuck knows if there was a mod to make it happen the Duke would've installed it already. Rayon grabs the lube and slicks up his fingers, slides one in smooth and easy.

_That _ seems to be a hit. The bot freezes in place, and then seems to remember—lets himself move, arching into it. Pushing hungrily back onto Rayon’s fingers, squeezing the headboard so hard the cheap, gilded wood is audibly creaking. Shit, every time Rayon starts to forget he’s not dealing with a human being he catches sight of that mangled hand, catches some hint of inhumanity. It’s kinda freaky, kinda reassuring.

“Yes,” the bot says, choked and high and sweet, like that wasn’t clear enough, and rocks his hips back again hopefully. “Y-yes, please please please yes.”

“Yeah, I got you,” Rayon says, distracted as he slips in a second finger, stroking in deep. He goes ahead and rubs cautiously over where the prostate would be, unsure if the bot’s designers included that, unsure if the bot will protest over that the same way he did a hand on his dick. Judging by the reaction, though, there’s definitely something good there and the bot isn't unhappy about it getting attention at all. Now that he’s allowed to move he’s a mess of sound and motion, crying out and shamelessly begging for more.

Begging for one thing pretty specifically, actually— “P-p-please, fuck fuck fuck _me, _please, gimme, please I want I _need_,” riding Rayon’s fingers hard like there’s nothing he wants more.

Rayon takes a rough breath and pulls his fingers out. “Okay,” he says, shoving his pants lower without regard for wrinkles, and smears lube hastily over his dick before his hips rock forward, nudging inside. _Fuck_, the noise the kid makes is something else. He's slick and hot around Rayon's dick, trembling under his hands, and the Duke doesn't fucking _deserve_ a ride like this, Rayon thinks as his hips pump slow and steady. That sleazy dickhead doesn't bother to treat him right, lets him get fucked up and doesn't bother to fix it, like that leg of his, the missing finger, the— He can’t think about this right now. That’s the opposite of helpful, damn. (But hell if Rayon feels like leaving him here after this.)

By the time Rayon’s starting to get close the bot has worn himself out—no less receptive, but slumped forward against the head of the bed, now. His head is hanging low, shuddering as he pants and whines. He hasn’t even attempted to touch his own dick, even though it’s flushed enough it looks painful and that sobbing edge is back to his breathing. Rayon thought he'd made it clear the rules were off for this encounter, _don't touch yourself_ no less than the rest, so what's the deal?

He rests a careful hand on the bot’s throat, right over the collar, and pulls him gently back against him—knows he’s got the angle right by the way the bot whines and shudders back to life, dick twitching. Rayon holds onto him, hips working faster now, and murmurs against his ear, breathless, “Come on, tell me what you need. Can't just leave you hangin’, that ain't how I roll. Talk to me.”

The bot’s body jerks, his back arches, his throat works under Rayon’s hand. But his voice is unexpectedly soft when he speaks, small and shaky and almost sad.

“...That’s not… wh-wh-what I’m for,” he says, forcing the words out one after another. “I’m. For. You. My Duke—_nnh_, ah! Told told told he knows, knnnows what I’m. For. Told. I’m for. Make you f-feel good. Need it. Need need need it.” His hand gropes backward, uncertain, grips a shaky handful of Rayon's open shirt and holds on. “I’m not. For that. Feeling good. I don’t—”

The longer he tries to explain, the shakier his voice sounds, like if he was a human he’d be trying not to cry, which is the exact fucking opposite of how anybody Rayon takes to bed should be feeling. Rayon clenches his jaw, then carefully and deliberately sets the anger aside for later. Wrong mood, right now, not what he needs.

“Alright,” he says, “hush, 's alright. You're okay, you're doin’ good.” If the kid can't come, isn't made for that, there's no point in stretching this out any more. Rayon lets go of his self-control and fucks the bot hard. When it arrives a minute later, orgasm hits him like a full-body blow, and the bot takes it like a champ, riding him through it, slowing down gradually, easing him off the high.

He sighs when Rayon pulls away, and it could be pleasure or it could be relief. He slumps forward, rests his forehead against the head of the bed again and takes long, slow breaths.

Rayon spends a minute breathing himself, one hand resting on the bot's back, cooling down… trying not to think too hard. Why the _fuck_ would you make a sexbot that couldn't come, especially when the rest of him is so perfect, what the fuck were his designers thinking? Except no, back up, slow down there—he was made in _Deluxe_. No way he was created to be a sexbot originally. So that piece is all thanks to the Duke, Rayon would bet his car on it. No shock he'd fix up some stolen, experimental human-simulating android to be a nice little piece of ass. Rayon probably shouldn't be surprised he didn't bother to complete the job, make it a perfect illusion.

Because it is just about perfect. Unsettlingly so.

He starts to straighten himself up a bit, trying to turn off the part of his mind that won't stop going. Zipping up, he puts a hand on the kid's shoulder.

The bot shudders a little at the touch, glances back over his shoulder and blinks dazedly at Rayon.

“Hhh,” he says, and sways. Catches himself on one hand, scrubs at his sweaty face with the other one. “I, I, I, _agh. _I—I—” he stops, grits his teeth and shakes his head, but can’t seem to shake the glitch. “I—!”

“Hey,” Rayon says, stroking his back. “Be cool, kid, it's fine. Just take a sec. You did good. You did real good.”

“Th-thank you,” mumbles the bot. He pulls himself around on the pillow, slumps against the headboard and closes his eyes. His hips keep shifting restlessly, he’s still desperately, painfully hard. Every so often one of his hands will twitch, like he wants to touch himself, but he doesn’t. Just kinda lies there. Shakes. Mumbles something, almost inaudible. Rayon pauses, brow furrowed.

“What?”

“...Can…” the bot sniffs, takes a shaky breath. “Would. Tell. W-would you tell. I did, did, did, d-did good…?”

“Tell who, the Duke?” Rayon isn’t a huge fan of the idea, mostly because he doesn’t want to see the Duke’s smug face. “He was watchin’, kid, think he knows.”

The bot shrinks at the reminder, eyes darting around the room. Rayon shakes his head, buckling his belt, and softens his voice. “... Think he'd give you something for it?”

“...I…” the bot lowers his voice even further, a tiny, half-ashamed mumble. “..._Reward…_”

“Yeah?” Rayon raises his eyebrows, interested. “Like what? Somethin’ I can do for you? Because you gotta know he's not… the best at _givin’_ folks things, even when they've earned 'em. Seems like it could slip his mind. I got a lot of resources, though, and you deserve a little something. What do you want?”

The bot blinks, and then slowly pushes himself up. “Want…?” he says, and glances around the room again, almost guiltily. Leans forward, a movement so abrupt it makes Rayon twitch in shock. “Can I—?” He cuts off, watching Rayon expectantly.

“Gonna need to clue me in here,” Rayon points out. “Probably, but can you _what?_”

"...Please," the bot whispers, and his mutilated hand comes up, trembling, to cling to the lapel of Rayon's shirt. "Let, please, hurts it h_ah_ —l-l-l-let me _please_—"

"Hey, hands off," says Rayon automatically, but softer than usual. He frowns, concerned and kind of on edge. He’s in the habit of leaving his partners wobbly-kneed and too well-fucked to walk, not shaking and half-sobbing from pain, and he’s finding more and more he doesn’t like the alternative experience at all_. _"What are you talkin' about, 'let you'? 'Let you' what?"

"Please," the bot whispers again, distant and faint like he barely knows what he's saying; he sways hard, blotchy-pale under his vivid flush. His eyes are unfocusing, pupils dilated to round, dark pits, and his face is streaked with sweat, and Rayon sees it coming just a second too late. "Let… mme..."

He doesn't try to cushion his fall, doesn't try to catch himself, just drops into Rayon’s lap with all the grace of a falling tree, and Rayon grabs him just in time to keep him from sliding back off and falling off the bed. He's dead weight, hot and trembling, feverish.

"What the _hell?_" says Rayon, sharp with dismay, and takes the bot's shoulder, pulling. He's heavier than he looks, like this. His head lolls as Rayon hauls him over onto his side; his eyes are slits of bloodshot white, rolled back. Shut down, unconscious, unresponsive.

Rayon takes a deep breath, ruthlessly kicking back the alarm, the jarring pang of that feeling he still can't name that's caught sharp and hard under his ribs. The kid's a bot, he's fine, it's not like he's sick or something. He's infinitely fixable, if the Duke cared enough to bother. (If they even have the tech down here, man, he's so _advanced_, and different from anything else Rayon's ever seen from Deluxe. He knew they could do some crazy mods on _humans_, but this…)

"Alright, alright, alright," comes an all-too-familiar voice, from everywhere and nowhere, jolting Rayon out of the thought that was just tickling at the back of his brain. He resists the urge to groan, but only because he knows the Duke would hear. "I think my boytoy there is just a _little _bit overwhelmed, no cause for concern I _assure _ you. I'll have some of my people come down and pick him up, get him a-plugged in and charging _right _back up. Just… leave him on the bed, or something."

Rayon… hesitates. (They can do some _crazy_ mods on humans, but building an actual android with body language and tone of voice and emotional reactions that can all pass for human without a second glance… is different.)

"Actually," he says. "Gimme a couple more minutes with him."

(And Kane’s priorities are more about floating gunboats and boxy killbots with lasers, aren't they? Not… this.)

A moment or two of radio silence, and then the staticky sound of a disbelieving little scoff. "H_well._ I never. Didn't bother keepin' up the gallant act for long, now _did _we? I'll warn you, he's not nearly as good of a lay when he's passed out."

"I'll be sure to remember that," says Rayon coolly. "So?"

"By all means, whatever _tickles _you," the Duke sniffs. "Fifteen more minutes then. Just… leave the door open when you go, somebody will be by to pick him up. I don't have time to sit around and watch, especially for half a show."

There's a clunk, brief static, and then silence. Normally Rayon would call that some kind of play, the Duke trying to lure him into a false sense of security—but with reasoning like that, he actually finds himself inclined to believe it. So. At least fifteen more minutes, more likely half an hour or more, since the Duke isn't much for precise timing.

Because the thing is, Rayon didn't get where he is now by ignoring his instincts. He's also developed quite the eye for details, for the smallest tip-off that could spiral into something bigger. And right now, his gut is telling him…

He's not sure. (He's almost sure, but _damn_ he wants to be wrong.) Now he has time to figure it out.

The bot groans faintly as he's rolled over onto his back—Rayon pulls up an eyelid, and sees a fitful flicker of blue in one unfocused eye. If this is a bot, it's a flawless piece of machinery; the surface tissue is perfect. No matter how long Rayon looks at the bot’s naked body or how thoroughly he touches, it doesn't feel like anything but smooth, flushed skin, damp with sweat. The hair, perfectly organic. Every eyelash in place.

...The pulse, hammering away in the bot's throat.

Rayon frowns, reaches out and presses two fingers under his jaw; it feels convincingly like a heartbeat, like a real pulse. But then, an android must have things to circulate, and there's no reason to change a good design as far as hearts go. Who knows, maybe Deluxe bots have pulses.

His fingers trace a bitten, fading bruise on one collarbone—another surge of unease, but if the skin can be made to flush and sweat, he reminds himself, there's no reason to leave out bruises. The bot's pierced nipples look swollen, and when Rayon nudges one of the studs the bot twitches and whimpers faintly. It feels like real human skin—gives like real human flesh when he pinches gently, getting another twitch and gasp in response, but—Deluxe tech _is_ way beyond anything Motorcity’s got. Rayon's heard they can do skin grafts up there that are artificial but have hair, pores, that look and feel natural. If they _were_ going to build an android, making him _look_ this human wouldn't be the difficult part.

He's still hard. And that's another weird thing, another point toward _android, _because if this is really what he was built for—or even what he was reprogrammed for, thank you Duke—that _would_ be enough to keep him ready even when he was passed out. Human bodies don't work that way, can't—_shouldn't_ be capable of working that way. At least, that's… what Rayon thought.

But he emotes so perfectly, and there are scars on his face, his arms, so thin and knife-straight Rayon assumed they were an android’s access seams. But if he was altered to be like this, if he was born human and then _made _this way…

The kid has metal in his arms, yeah, but he also has flushed lips and a heaving chest and if that wasn’t a prostate Rayon was messing with it sure fucking acted like one. And no matter how Rayon turns it around in his mind, he can't think of any reason Kane Co. would bother to include that in an android. Any reason they would build him to get hard or feel pleasure, to lick his lips when he’s nervous, to give Rayon that desperate look and reach out to him for help.

"..._Wanna go—_" the bot mumbles, and presses his face into Rayon's knee, hides from the world. His voice breaks, a tiny, shaking sleep-talk of a whisper, and he doesn’t sound like a glitching bot right now. He sounds like a kid trying not to cry. "..._Mom—”_

It's like a tiny bolt of lightning going straight through Rayon's skull. The growing disquiet resolves abruptly into something darker, sharper, heavier. Rayon sits very still, as everything he’s seen and said and done tonight shifts sharply over into a new light and becomes a picture he...doesn’t like at all.

The kid shivers, still coming back to himself, still shaking and barely in his own head. "Wan' my," he says again, quiet and plaintive, a mantra from the miserable edge of sleep. Rayon’s heard men, full-grown and hard as nails, out of their heads with pain or bleeding out, begging for their mom or their dad—turned his stomach then, and he’s distantly startled that this moment, somehow, manages to be even worse. "... _I want my mom I wanna—_go home, _I, _I want—hh—"

And then he jerks all over, fingers closing hard in the rumpled bed sheets, and his eyes snap open. Light flickers and flashes through him like a computer system booting up, and he jerks again, shudders, pushes himself upright so fast and hard he almost clocks Rayon in the face with the back of his skull.

"I, I-I-I-I," he says, and the stutter and glitch are back in his voice, twitching through his limbs as he tries to scramble upright. "Sorry, I'm, so so so so so so—I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. I fell ah, _error— Nnh!_ F-fell asleep I fell. Didn't mean to I'm sorry."

"You're not an android," says Rayon. He doesn't make it an accusation—it's a statement of fact. It's the truth, and that sharp thing in his chest twists. (Fuck, he's a _kid_, can’t be older than nineteen or twenty, and the Duke's been—the Duke just _pimped him out_ to Rayon, and Rayon—just went ahead and— No, he can't afford to think about it right now. He should’ve listened to his instincts, he should’ve looked harder, he should have _known._)

"How did you get here, kid?" he adds, still very steady. Fix the problem first, feel the guilt later. The middle of the road’s no place for fixing engines.

The kid’s gone absolutely frozen-still, and if Rayon didn't know before he definitely knows now. Those big blue eyes couldn't hide a secret if the kid's life depended on it. Which, if the way he's looking at Rayon right now is any indication, it might.

"No!" the kid says, a second too late and high-pitched with terror. "N-n-no! I'm, I have to, I'm—android, I'm a a a a a—_ah_, I'm an android, my Duke took—"

"Y'know, we've got rules down here." Rayon buttons his shirt, tugs it straight, tucks it in. Picks up his tie from the bedside table. "No crossin’ gang lines. No protection money. No deals with Deluxe." He looks up, sees the bot—no. Sees the _kid _looking at him with round, terrified eyes. "...No ownin’ people," he finishes. "No buying, no selling, no _owning_. And you..." He pulls his tie square with a decisive final tug. "I don't care what's goin' on with your arms, or your eyes, or any of..." he waves a hand up and down the kid's naked body. "...This. You’re not a bot. He's got no business sayin’ you're his."

The kid barely seems to be breathing, wide eyes fixed on Rayon's face. "...I..." he says, and then his eyes dart around the room and the words catch in his throat in a tiny, subvocal whimper. He looks back at Rayon, and—god, how could he ever have thought this kid was a bot? The expressiveness of his face, the subtlety of fear and need and uncertainty in his eyes. _ I can't_, that look says, as clear as words. _ Please._

It hits Rayon with a jolt—of _course_ the kid doesn't know it's safe to talk right now, he was knocked out. Rayon didn't think.

"...Ssssaved me from Deluxe," the kid's saying, so quiet it's barely audible, trembling. Shifts his weight a little and tips his head back, throat working on a harsh little whine, and it's like a cold fist to the gut to be reminded that he's still hard, that whatever subroutine makes him desperate and needy like flicking a switch is still running. "NnnnnI'm—I'm, I'm, I'm, what I'm, h-he told, he knows. Wh-what I'm. F-f-f-f-for, he told me." And there's something heavy and cold and tired in his eyes, a kind of dead exhaustion. "...I'm his," he finishes.

Rayon takes a deep breath through his nose. “You're not,” he says. “Look, he's not listenin’ in right now, he ditched when you passed out. You don't have to worry about gettin’ punished for anything you say. _I'm_ sure as hell not gonna hurt you.” Not any more than he already has, anyway, swanning in here and using him just like the Duke does, no concern for if the kid had any choice about it because he was just a bot, what did it matter. Bots don't get a choice, they just obey.

The kid huddles in on himself, terrified again, a shaky edge to his breathing that has nothing to do with arousal. “He he he he he knows, he, always, he would kn-know.” He sniffs, scrubs at his dry eyes with his mutilated hand. “P-please don’t, don’t, please don’t t-t-t-t—_ah_! Please—don’t talk like. Talk, that. Hhhhe’ll...”

“We. Have. _Rules._” Rayon picks up his jacket off the bed, pulls it on his shoulders, straightens it like he’s putting on armor. “What he knows don’t figure into it at this point, kid. He thinks he doesn’t have to follow our laws, well he’s about to get a wake-up call. And _you_—”

The kid flinches as Rayon turns back to him. Rayon stops, catches himself—his voice was rising, sharp and cold with anger, and the bot—the kid—is flattened against the head of the bed, eyes round, lips thin and trembling.

“...You,” Rayon finishes, quieter and slower but no less cool and crisp, “...are comin’ with me.”

He didn’t really think about the fact that he was making a decision until he said it out loud, but that’s how this is gonna go down, there’s no way around it. He'll need to make a few calls, get backup, get a tech specialist on site ASAP to start working on the kid's programming. Start unraveling the knots the Duke’s tied him in.

That's the part that really gets to Rayon, makes him equal parts furious and unsettled. The kid's got programming like a computer, he's a damn _cyborg_. Rayon can get his head around the physical mods the kid's got, those light-up eyes and it seems like at least one limb replaced, but the way the Duke has messed around with his brain, got him revved up and desperate with the click of a few keys, the way the kid jerks and stutters and glitches out—that's bizarre, almost unbelievable. Hard to square with the kid being human, hard to believe even Deluxe could mod someone up so much they can pass for a damn android. Creepy as hell.

Gonna have to straighten out whatever bullshit the Duke’s put in his head, see if there's a way to prevent him from taking bad orders, or maybe taking orders at all. Just let him be an augmented human instead of a wanna-be bot.

The kid’s mouth drops open. “I c-can’t,” he says, and then “The Duke, he, Duke will—” and then “Who who who who are—? Who _are _you?”

“Name’s Rayon,” Rayon says, and slides on his shades. “Leader of the Skylarks. Nice to meet you.” He gives the kid a nod and waits to see if the Duke let him hang onto basic courtesies like how introductions work.

“Rayon,” repeats the kid quietly. Opens and closes his mouth and licks his lips nervously, glancing around. “I, I’ve heard, I know—he, he, he t-talks. About you.” Quieter, almost awestruck— “...You—hhhave a g-gang, run a run a run a gang, he’s—you _scare_ ah! Error, ow, _error_.”

Rayon lifts his brows, darkly amused. He scares the Duke, huh? And the asshole made sure the kid can't even say that aloud.

It makes sense the kid's a little preoccupied, so Rayon prompts him. “So,” he says, tilting his head. “You got a name, or should I just keep callin’ you ‘kid’?”

For a second, the expression of hazy fear and want fades, and the kid just blinks at him, startled and a little bit confused. Then his pale brows furrow, his hand twitches up to his head. "I," he says, and shakes his head, a sharp, glitching little twitch-twitch-twitch of unhappy anxiety. "I, uh," he says, and his eyes flicker. "I, I'm, uh. I've got a got a got a got a _name_, I've got—I'm, _error designation redacted_, I'm—_ah!_ N-no, no no no no, error, access denied, I-I've got a—r-r-r—designation, redacted." He jerks upright, stares up at Rayon with huge, terrified eyes. "I don't don't d-d-don't know, I can't access—!"

“_Okay_,” Rayon says, raising a quelling hand. Hell. “I'll get some folks workin’ on that, don't worry about it for now. We'll get you a nickname or something.”

He wonders if it's Deluxe or the Duke that was responsible for that little cruelty and decides to blame the Duke because why not? Take a sweet kid like this and hack his brain, turn him into a fucking _sex slave_, why not take his name away too. Hurt him and scare him and make him tear himself up trying to earn rewards you never give him—

Rayon stops. “You were gonna tell me,” he says abruptly, “what your reward ought to be. I was serious, I'll give it to you if I can, you earned it.” Finding out the answer isn't a priority right now, but the question might help the kid believe he's safe, Rayon's gonna look after him. "I know you're not a bot, don't bother tellin' me you are—what's he do to reward you when you're good?"

The kid stares at him for a second, but this time there's something more than just desperation or fear behind his flickering eyes. Curiosity, amazement, maybe even a spark of something like hope. He pulls his spine straight with an obvious effort, takes a slow breath through his nose. "When. I'm good," he says, halting but as steady as he's been all night. There's a faint tremor in his voice, and his eyes kind of flicker shyly away from Rayon's, but without the glitching, it's easier than ever to see the humanity under the laser-straight scars and glowing eyes. "...He. L-lets me come. I would. Like, I would like like—hhf. I would like. That."

"Thought you said you couldn't," says Rayon, frowning, and the boy groans faintly in the back of his throat. Rubs his sweaty, flushed face with one hand. "I was tryin'—"

"I know!" the kid blurts out, out loud and frustrated for the first time—and then immediately shrinks back, huddling in on himself, hands half-rising like he thinks he's going to get slapped. "No no no sorry I'm s-sorry I didn't mean mean mean mean to, sorry i-it just hurts hurts it hurts and—"

"_Settle_," says Rayon firmly. The kid jerks, gasps, clams up. There. No way to calm him down if he's not gonna listen. "Look, I said I wasn't gonna hurt you, I'm a man of my word. The stuff the Duke's got you doin'—it doesn't make any sense, from where I'm standin', that's all. You're gonna… get your reward. But first you gotta tell me the rules."

"Sorry," says the kid again, and settles himself down, following orders. He still looks scared as hell, but at least he's not cringing anymore. "You asked me what I _hhh_, wh-what I need, I need I need, I know—how to answer, I know the right answer, I need, to make you feel good, my, sir, my, I need.”

“Uh-huh,” says Rayon slowly. _I know the right answer_. He’d bet the results if the kid gave the wrong answer were...not pretty. “Tell me what you need” seemed like a pretty straightforward question, but of course it can’t be that easy. “...How about what you’d _like?_”

He’s watching close—he catches the flash of relief in the kid’s eyes. “Can’t ask—unless he says—tells me to ask for—” the bot shakes that thought off, wincing. “—Don’t be needy, don’t be, don’t, don’t, don’t be needy. But sometimes he lets lets lets me. If I'm g-good. Enough. Sometimes. T-tells me. I can."

“And that's what it takes,” Rayon concludes, watching close, and sees relief again, eager hope. “You gotta be told you can.” He wants to snarl over that, wants to say the kid could've just told him what to say earlier, when Rayon thought he'd made it _damn_ clear he wanted the kid to come—hell, would've let him come two or three times, that would've been so much better than how it went—but that's pointless. All the kid's expectations are from how the Duke's treated him; that's not exactly going to teach him to expect his partner to be reasonable. Or convince him it's safe to ask for favors.

Rayon taps a finger against his thigh, eyeing the kid's dick, still hard and red. That's gotta hurt, it's no wonder the kid's twitchy.

With the awareness that the kid's—a kid, exactly the gangly just-grown teenager he looks like, and how he's been treated, how _Rayon's_ treated him, comes a powerful reluctance to touch him again. It feels wrong to lay hands on him now, like compounding the crime Rayon's already committed. He's screwed the kid over enough already out of ignorance, though; he’s a shaking, agonized mess, and it’s Rayon’s fault, whether he knew at the time or not. The least he can do now is give him something nice.

“Alright,” he says abruptly. Steps over to the bed and sits down. Grabs some more lube, because for all the kid's dripping wet he's probably sore and oversensitive, too, and the last thing Rayon's gonna do is make him hurt more.

Then he stops again, because… no. He's running on assumptions again. Maybe the kid can get himself off with permission and maybe someone else has to do it for him, but Rayon didn't even fucking ask. The kid is _human_ , not a bot, not to just do whatever you want with.

“You want me to do it, or do it yourself?” he asks, meeting those round blue eyes. “You don't feel like bein’ touched again, that's cool, I'll give you permission. Just tell me what you want.”

“Want you,” says the kid immediately. He edges forward on the bed, jerks, shakes, catches himself again. His eyes flicker down to the collar of Rayon’s shirt, the place he touched—then back up to Rayon’s face and… Hell, it’s that same look. Hopeful, uncertain. The look that got him into this whole mess. “...I, I can’t, I can’t touch, never, I can’t ever, I’ll be good I _won’t. _Please.”

Rayon breathes in, doesn't swear over that, nods. “C’mere,” he says, tugging gently on the kid's shoulder. He coaxes him in close, puts an arm around him to keep him steady against his body’s shudder and twitch, and wraps a slick hand around his dick, stroking.

“You can come whenever you need,” he tells the kid. “That work?”

If there are words in the noise the kid makes, Rayon can’t hear them—but the answer is pretty clear anyway in the way he doubles over around the touch and grabs Rayon’s arm so hard his grip is probably gonna leave bruises. He lets go a second later, but his hips rock up helplessly into the touch anyway, and god, he’s so _expressive. _Not just noisy—although he certainly is that—just spilling out every reaction, every twitch and shudder and moan. No attempts to hide what he likes, what he wants, what feels good.

After having to leave him hard and miserable the first time, it's sort of pleasing to get him loud and moving, make it real good for him. Rayon still doesn't exactly feel great about doing this, considering the… circumstances. But the open pleasure on the kid's face, the note of amazement in his gasps and moans, that at least puts an edge of grim satisfaction on the uneasy guilt. He needs it, he deserves it, and it's the opposite of how the Duke’s been treating him all this time—how long, Rayon wonders abruptly, and makes a note to find out later.

“That's it,” he murmurs, “you just enjoy yourself, you look so fine...” The stream of sweet nothings and encouragement comes out almost automatically while his hand keeps moving firm and steady. The skin under his fingers is getting even slicker, the kid leaking precome as he gets close. His head drops back on Rayon’s shoulder, his hand gropes up and finds the arm around his shoulders, clings at his wrists, squeezes Rayon’s fingers desperately.

He doesn’t scream—just gasps, shuddering all over, lets out a sharp, hitching whine and finally—_finally_ comes. Gasps through it, making little sighing, moaning noises like he wants to scream but he’s too far gone.

It takes a while, Rayon _makes _it take a while, draws it out for him, makes it as good as he knows how. When the kid collapses back against him he’s panting and boneless and worn out, heavy against Rayon’s chest. His trembling grip on Rayon’s hand softens and falls away again.

“..._Mm,_” he mumbles, and turns his face a little, the bridge of his nose and one cheekbone hot against Rayon’s cheek. “...Y-you, thank—th-th-thank—you, _thank you, hha_-ah! Ah…”

“No problem,” Rayon says quietly, as his heart does a weird kind of hitch in his chest. The kid may be a mess and used to some seriously screwed up crap, but _man_ he's cute, and it feels good to treat him right. He’s too young, too hurt, too out-of-his-mind messed up for any of this to sit well, but he seems like a sweet kid.

Rayon keeps his arm around the kid, giving him time to recover while Rayon cleans up and considers his next move. Time to make those calls, and then— There's a couple different ways to play this, but—the party’s still going out there, there's a fair chunk of Motorcity society in attendance, and Rayon’s self-control may be good, but it doesn't mean he's not furious. The Duke loves a good spectacle. Maybe it's time to see how he likes being at the center of attention for the wrong reasons.

But first… who knows how the kid would react to actually having to leave this place—leave his _owner. _The Duke may have used him as a sexbot, but Rayon’s willing to bet that if he’s Deluxe-made, he’s got some skills that might make it pretty damn hard to pull him out of here if he tries to put up a fight. Rayon heard the noises the headboard made when the kid squeezed on it; a grip like that could break a man’s arm without trying. And there’s no way the Duke doesn’t have safeguards to prevent his custom-programmed sex-bot from walking out on him, and Rayon doesn’t have the authority to override whatever those safeguards might be. But…

…_But, _he’s already passed out once tonight, just because he was miserable and overwhelmed. And he seems to be halfway there again, bleary and semi-conscious. And… yeah, no surprises here—he’s already hard again, breath shuddering. He needs knocked out before they can get him out of here, and it seems to Rayon like there’s a pretty clear solution staring him right in the face. One the kid’s not likely to question or turn down, one that doesn’t involve scaring him or hurting him.

“Good?” Rayon says quietly, and reaches down to touch the kid again, even gentler this time, but relentless. By the way he jerks into the touch and the helpless noise he makes, he certainly doesn’t mind. “Good. You want another one?”

“_Oh,_” says the kid, and yeah, he’s barely holding on now. When Rayon shifts him to glance down at the kid’s face, his eyes are unfocused pits of black. His expression twitches, caught somewhere between pleasure and hope and pain. His legs are trembling, and fuck, Rayon can’t imagine what he’s feelin’ right now, nerves haywire with computer overrides and god knows how long since he came last. “Again? I, more than, you want, uh—?”

Startled to get more than one, huh. Yeah, it doesn’t sound like the Duke’s generous with them. If the kid’s only allowed to get off once per… day, per week, who knows how often—that puts a new spin on the way he begged not to come the first time. Getting off early would mean he’d just have to deal with however long the Duke wanted to play with him afterwards, and he obviously gets sensitive.

“You get as many as you want,” Rayon says firmly, and the kid blinks through his haze, smiling a faint, shaky little smile. Like Rayon hung the moon and stars for him, instead of just showing him some modicum of pleasure without expecting him to pay for it in screaming first. “You want another?”

“_Sir,_” says the kid fervently, and licks his lips, steadies himself with difficulty. His hand is big and warm on Rayon’s knee, clinging as he sways. “_Nnnhh_, y-yeah, I—nnh, I don’t, I c— I c— I d-don’t know if I c-c-can— But—please, I want...”

“You’re okay, kid,” says Rayon, and rests his hand lightly on the kid’s throat again just to feel the frantic pulse pound against his palm. Breathes through the rushing, pounding current of reckless anger and stupid protectiveness that's aching behind his ribs. “...I’ll take care of it.”

—

Rayon’s absence at the party hasn’t gone unnoticed. Foxy’s theory for a while is that Rayon’s made another… _poor life choice _with the Duke, but about thirty minutes after they vanish together, Rayon is still gone and the Duke is back, looking incredibly smug.

So either they banged, or possibly Rayon is dead. Either way, not really Foxy’s problem.

It isn’t until Babs appears out of nowhere at her elbow to offer her a drink that Foxy notices the _other _person who’s vanished from the party.

“He’s got you serving drinks now?” she says, and deigns to snag a cup of engine-block champagne off the tray.

“My pleasure,” says the Duke’s Number Two, deadpan as a cliff-face. “You wanna hors d'oeuvre or what?”

“Where’d the bot go who was serving stuff before?” says Foxy, and she only notices the tiny twitch of Babs’ lip because she’s looking for it.

But all Babs says is “I’d go for the tiny sandwiches if I was you.” And then she’s gone, strolling away. Foxy takes a second to appreciate the sway of her hips, eyebrows raised, then shrugs and goes back to her drink and her tiny sandwich. It’s as delicious as promised.

It’s almost another thirty minutes later when a door opens at the back of the hall, and a familiar figure in a meticulously neat black suit strides through, a black hole against the red and gold of the Duke’s mansion.

The Duke is distracted, but about three seconds after Rayon appears in the door, Number Two slides up next to the Duke’s elbow and whispers something in his ear. The Duke glances over, and then immediately abandons whoever he was just talking to and goes bounding over to Rayon.

Foxy obviously can’t hear what they’re talking about, but she’s known Rayon for quite a while now, and he looks… different. There’s something about the way he’s standing, the way he watches the Duke approach, that makes Foxy’s hands itch for a weapon. _Trouble’s coming._

The Duke either doesn’t sense it or doesn’t care, because he falls in next to Rayon and makes a casual attempt to throw an arm around his shoulders.

Rayon takes a sharp step backward and slaps the Duke’s hand away from him.

Nobody was visibly paying attention, before, but everybody definitely is now. Silence spreads out from the two of them, conversations petering out. The Duke looks affronted, startled, more than a little bit confused, and Rayon’s face is cool and blank but when he speaks his voice is icy and carrying and angrier than Foxy has heard him in a long, long time.

“There are rules here, Duke,” he says. “We started doin’ business because I thought you could live up to that standard. I don’t appreciate bein’ proved wrong, any more than I like you draggin’ me into it with you.”

The Duke’s confusion shifts, subtle but unmistakable. Shocked and then angry and then haughty. Anybody who’s done business with him knows that the Duke doesn’t _do _guilt, but… that’s the look of a man who knows he’s been caught.

“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” he says, and _that _makes Rayon’s blank look crack, lip curling for a second.

“Like hell you don’t,” he says curtly, and his head twitches like he’s glancing at the crowd watching them. “...I’m going to clean up the mess you made, but that’s the only favor I’m doin’ you here. We’re done. Consider yourself unwelcome at the Skylark Motel.”

A ripple runs through the room—people are glancing at each other, staring openly now. The Duke’s hands clench and unclench at his sides. “You've _hardly_ got any grounds to go a-throwing _accusations_ around,” he snaps. “I don’t know if you’re forgetting, but the junkyards are _my _territory, and when somethin’ interesting falls in my lap it’s my _right_ to take it home and put it to use however I want!”

“Not when it had no business bein’ junked in the first place,” Rayon says, cold and precise. “Anyone with half a brain woulda noticed real damn quick that wasn't _trash_.” He taps his shades higher up his nose and steps back, visibly disengaging. “We'll be takin’ him with us.”

“Like _hell_ you will!” the Duke snarls, “he's _mine!_”

Foxy raises her eyebrows, munching on another tiny sandwich. This is the best show she's seen since Samantha and Shana broke up. _He_, is it? Well.

“Not anymore,” Rayon says, and wheels to walk away with a measured, unhurried stride as the Duke fumes behind him. He doesn't try to stop Rayon, though, which is interesting, especially when put together with “he's mine” and the talk about rule-breaking.

The room swells from scattered whispers and murmurs into excited babble as the Duke flounces out in the opposite direction a minute later, and Foxy listens to the flying, ricocheting gossip. With the clues Rayon dropped, it's not hard to at least guess what kind of heinous business has got him cutting the Duke off dead.

Might just be politic to stop doing business with the Duke for a while, Foxy thinks. At least until the fuss dies down.

Maybe longer. The things Rayon hinted at, the stuff he implied, Foxy wants no truck with.

She picks up another plate of nibbles and settles down to speculate with fellow party-goers. Probably won't be long before the Duke gets petulant about the party going on without him and has them all thrown out. Until then, she might as well enjoy the sandwiches.

—

The unit is awake.

He wakes up slowly, flashes of flashes of flashes of data presenting themselves to him. Bits. Pieces. Soft leather under his back. Strange, heavy fabric over him. A jacket. Someone is humming. Soft music playing. Quiet, smooth, not gaudy, earsplitting guitar.

"Hey, I think he's awake," says a voice, and the unit snaps upright— _ you got no business lyin' around when your owner is in the room, bot— _ "Hey, whoa there!"

"Settle down, kid," says—says—a voice, familiar, not [REGISTRATION HOLDER] not his Duke, but _familiar. _"You're safe."

Nobody's ever told him that before. The unit gasps in a few deep breaths, staring around. He's in a dark back seat, a vehicle he doesn't he doesn't recognize he doesn't know where he is. It's all smooth black upholstery and soft, sky-blue lights. There's a man sitting in the seat the unit wasn't lying on, holding up his hands and looking worried. The unit is is is exposed the unit is stripped raw vulnerable the unit is naked and shaking and gasping for air. Anybody could touch him anything could hurt him the unit is is is is is—

There's a man in the driver's seat of the vehicle, dark skin and short hair, black glasses, tapping his fingers on the wheel and, he, he's, and the unit _knows _him.

"Sir," he says. "M-m-m-my, sir, Rayon?"

The man's head half-turns—a flash of dark eyes, glancing back over his shoulder from the road blurring in front of him. "Surprised you remember," he says. Takes a long, smooth turn. "That's me. You feelin' better?"

He's bare he's cold and hot and cold and gasping. Shaking. "Where," he says, and catches on the— "Where where where where, m-my Duke, where—?!"

"You're not his anymore," says Rayon. "Don't worry about him."

No _no_ he'll know, he'll know the unit left the mansion and it'll _hurt, _he'll cry and scream and scream and scream and won't be touched and be touched too much and whipped and touched and hit and fucked and won't won't won't get to come, he'll—

He doesn't feel the car pull over, doesn't hear the door open—all he knows is all of a sudden there's a pair of strong, warm hands gripping his wrists, squeezing hard enough to ache. Pulling him back and back and back, himself again. He's shaking, he's crying already but he can't cry he can't. His face is dry but he’s sobbing but he can’t, he can't cry, he's not allowed.

"Look. At. Me." Rayon says, every word clear and cool and heavy. The unit gasps, sobs, tries not to sob, can't stop. Goes still, waits. Looks. Rayon waits, waits, waits to see if he'll follow if he'll obey if he'll do as he's told. Nods when the unit stops whining-crying-making noise. "...Good. Listen. You got a lotta stuff in your head right now. Doesn't belong there. You gonna lie down and let 17 fix it for me?"

He can't, he can't say, he isn't allowed, the Duke's orders aren't something he can fix, you can't fix—but the unit is broken is broken is malfunctioning and _broken _and god he wants to be fixed. He just wants to be not broken anymore. He nods.

"Good," says Rayon, and oh, it feels good it feels _good _so good. The unit whimpers a little at how good it feels, catches the noise and bites his lip and hopes it wasn't too too too too loud. It must be okay, because Rayon doesn't discipline him for it. Just nods again and looks at the man who's in the back seat with the unit. "...How far did you get?"

"There's some heavy stuff goin' on in his frontal lobe," says 17. The words mean something should mean something don't mean anything he knows what that means. Can't remember. "I was gonna start there. Hard stuff to shift, but it's the stuff that's messing him up the most."

"Alright." Rayon turns back to the unit, squeezes his wrists again. "...You just relax for a while," he says, and it's not he's not it's not an order, an override, but it sounds so nice. _Relax, be fixed. _He likes Rayon's orders, he likes the cool dark and the soft, heavy fabric in his lap. There's a white line down the back of it, a number number number number—a one, in white. Rayon isn't wearing his jacket.

"Lie down," says Rayon, and the unit does as he's told. The man called 17 reaches out and the and he and the unit flinches, he knows what it is, he knows, _lie down and let me—_but all the man does is pull the suit the pull the jacket pull the warm fabric up over him so he's not naked not cold anymore. "Good. We're almost back. You just sleep."

"Y-yessir," says the unit, and means it. "Th-thank, I, thanks, thank you."

He has his eyes closed, he can't see, but he hears a soft noise like a sigh, and a hand rests on his head and it's warm it's so warm and then it's gone and he's in the dark. Quiet.


	2. Familiar, But Not Too Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Skylarks slowly get used to their new guest, while he slowly gets used to himself.

The unit is awake. He hurts all over, from his aching head to his throbbing feet, and there’s a weird, pulling, aching emptiness—oh. He’s hungry. God, he’s _really _hungry.

The unit sits up, stretches and groans as his spine cracks and his shoulders pop. It’s nice, waking up slow and sleepy, in a dim room with no bright lights. He—

This isn’t his room.

This isn’t his room and everything is wrong, he’s not wearing the clothes he’s supposed to has to he’s got to wear what his Duke tells him and he’s not, and he’s not where he’s supposed to be. This room isn’t bright and red and gold, it’s dark and the blanket is dark blue. Somebody put a tanktop on him while he was asleep, white and soft and fabric worn thin with repeated washing, above a pair of loose, soft pants that don’t make, don’t, that aren’t, they’re not tight, it feels _good _and comfortable and it’s not supposed to, it’s supposed to look right and this is wrong.

The unit scrambles out of bed, stumbles, rights himself and stares around wildly. His thoughts aren’t—they don’t seem, they’re different, smoother, but that’s not helping the terror that’s chewing at his spine and burning behind his eyes. There aren’t any clothes in the dresser, and he can’t take these off, the Duke likes to undress him he shouldn’t be he has to be dressed, but not like this. He has to go apologize he has to ask ask ask ask where, ask how, ask if he can fix this, please.

The hallway outside is just as unfamiliar, soft lights along the walls and ceiling, quiet doors up and down the length of it with numbers on them. The unit stares, helplessly confused, drags his fingers through his hair and then turns, startled, as the faint sound of a laugh echoes up the hallway. People, the party, he was supposed to serve, he had to serve the drinks. _Directive: serve drinks and look pretty_.

The party doesn’t look the same either. It’s a little room with a bunch of low couches, a bar, a fake fireplace in the wall. There are men sitting around in white shirts and black suits and sunglasses, and when the unit staggers to the door they all stop and turn and stare at him.

“Oh hey,” says one of them. “He’s up! Somebody tell the boss.”

“I, I, I,” says the unit, and bites the words off, tries again, “I, where, I’m not, h-h-h-help me, please, I don’t know where—”

“You’re at the Skylark Motel,” says one of the guys closest to him helpfully. The unit stares at him.

“...Motel?”

“Yeah, like…” The guy scratches his chin. “Like, a place to stay, y’know. Motel. Mr. Rayon brought you back from the party, sez you’re gonna be stayin’ a while.”

No, _no_, he can’t, he can’t he can’t. “I can’t!” says the unit, high and sharp and panicky, and bites his tongue, tries to bring his voice down. Don’t whine don’t shout don’t scream unless you’re allowed. “I-I-I-I’m the Duke’s, I’m, he’s gonna, he’s gonna be s-s-so mad, I’m, so—he’ll—”

“Hey! Whoa there.” People are getting up, hurrying over. Somebody’s hand on his back between his shoulder blades, rubbing in circles. “—Christ, he’s shaking. Where’s Mr. Rayon— Kid, nobody ain’t gonna do nothin’ to you, okay? ‘S all good, we’re good!”

The unit sinks down to the ground, buries his face in his arms, curls up and wheezes for breath against his knees.

“—Started freaking out, boss, I dunno what—”

“I do,” says a voice, _familiar _a familiar voice, and a hand touches the top of his head. “Hey. _Hey. _Inquiry. Registration holder.”

“C-confirmed,” chokes the unit, and opens his mouth to—he— “—[Unknown], Rayon.”

“Yeah,” says the voice, and the hand on his head twitches and then moves, ruffling up his hair. “Doesn’t say ‘The Duke’ in there anymore, does it?”

An inquiry. The unit shakes his head, still trembling, not daring to raise his raise his look up yet. The hand is still on his head and it feels nice it feels so nice. Safe. It doesn’t, anymore. The Duke, he’s not. He’s not anymore, he’s not the _Duke’s _anymore. He can’t breathe, but for once it’s not in a bad way. Can’t think straight. He’s not the Duke’s. The Duke doesn’t own him anymore.

“Let’s get you up. Come on.”

Hands help him help take his arms, pull him up onto his feet. The man’s there in front of him, the man who—from the party, the unit remembers. Faulty memory files, but but but but but he remembers. Rayon. Registration holder. Confirmed, registration holder.

He can remember now, too, clearer—remember begging and crying and screaming for for for for this man for his new owner. The arousal override isn’t turned on and in its absence the humiliation of it all wells up all over again, like it does every time. Can’t meet can’t meet can’t look him in the eyes. Staring at his owner’s perfectly-pressed pants instead, his perfect shiny shoes. Wondering if they’ll be better, if they’ll taste less plasticky less oily than—if it’ll be better now, a little bit better. Rayon’s been so much more, so much, so much better already, even if he gets worse like the Duke did, he’s so much better.

“Hey.” Fingers snap in front of his face. “You hearin’ me?”

He didn’t, he didn’t hear, didn’t listen. “Yes!” the unit says, too fast and too loud, _stupid, _obvious. “No! I’m I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“You need to get some food in you,” says one of the other guys, white scrubs black jacket black stethoscope, a medical tech? A medical, a technician, they’re different down here than they were before the Duke. “And some water, and at least a couple more hours of sleep.”

The unit glances up, catches Rayon’s eyes, glances between them. Asking. He does, he really, he really really wants some food some water some sleep, he’s so tired. But…

"Go easy on the food this first time," says Rayon mildly. "I'm bettin' the Duke didn't feed you nearly enough. You'll make yourself sick, eatin' too fast."

So much better, so good, so _good, _so much better. The unit nods fast, feels a dumb, hot prickle in his eyes but—he can't, he can't cry, he knows that. His eyes, his, his, they don't—

Apparently they do now, somebody turned off that override, because the guys around him go "aw, man," and "hey, kid, hey" and pat him on the shoulders and his face is hot and wet. People don't— _ nothin' cute about that, baby, you won't be doin' that in the future _ —don't don't don't like to see it, he shouldn't. "S-sorry," the unit chokes, and covers his face, scrubs at his eyes—it's been so long since he _could _cry, he doesn't remember how he used to stop. Doesn't remember how to control himself anymore. "Sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry it’s bad I’m bad, I’m sorry, I’ll fix fix fix fix it, I’m trying not to, I’m sorry—"

"Geez, kid," says somebody next to him, and somebody gives his shoulders a little shake, rubs his back roughly. "Nothin' to be sorry about. Boss, did you say he was—"

"Mm," says Rayon, and that's all he needs to say apparently, because the guy doesn't finish his question. There's four or five guys all trying to calm the unit down all at the same time, and all of them seem kind of—flustered, like they don't know what to say, and he shouldn't— _are you _laughing _at me, _bot—but he can't hold in a weak, wet little giggle.

"Aw hey, there you go," says one of the guys—long, tight black ponytail, lined brown face, nice smile, such a nice smile they're all so _nice_. "Yeah, that's it kiddo, you're good. You can cry if you wanna, 's alright. Sounds like you had a rough… well. Life."

"It's a lot, huh?" A young man, maybe only a year or two older than the unit is, maybe only twenty twenty-one twenty-five. Huge scar, deep scar all across one side of his face, pink and tight and shiny against his brown skin. It goes under his glasses, he’s gotta be missing an eye. Soft voice, quiet, gentle. "Hey, you wanna go see the kitchen? We've got an in-house cook, can make you anything you want. What kinda food do you like?"

"I, I don't, I dunno, I, I, I—" He doesn't know the names of the things the Duke fed him, couldn't usually focus on flavor past the way the Duke would play with him as he tried to eat. Didn’t get to finish most things anyway, after his mouth and his body and his noises got too interesting. After the Duke decided he’d have more fun playing with the unit than feeding him. The unit blinks helplessly around at the people standing around him, confused and hopeful and scared. "I don't. Know."

"He's down from Deluxe," Rayon says, and a couple of the men around him make understanding noises. The unit winces but Rayon doesn’t mention the, the interim, doesn’t mention where he’s been since Deluxe, just says, "—hasn't had a chance to develop much of a palate yet."

"We'll help with that," says the quiet boy, and reaches out to take the unit's hand. The unit starts to let him—remembers, flinches back, curling around his damaged limb.

"Sorry," he says again. "It's, it's not, it's ugly it's wrong. I'm—"

"Hey, no," says the boy, and smiles, lopsided with the scar. "Have you seen who you're talkin' to? Come on."

The unit hesitates, swallows, breathes in deep and glances up at his new owner again. Rayon nods once, slow and quiet. The unit breathes out, uncurls, holds out his hand. The boy with the scars takes it like it's not, like it isn't, like he's not _defective _or ugly or—pulls a little bit.

"I’m Number 59," he says, and the unit follows, hypnotized, limping a little. Now that the adrenaline has stopped masking the alerts, he can feel his damaged knee again. It's an old pain, familiar. Grounding, somehow. "You should try 103's veggie burgers. And we can get you some gloves, if you don't like people lookin'."

The unit glances back at Rayon, but he's not even listening, and and and if he trusts these people with his bot, they probably know the rules. The unit was always supposed to follow orders from the Duke's servants as long as they didn't break one of the Duke's rules. Maybe gloves are okay? It's not like Rayon would want—he's a good, good-looking guy, he dresses nice and he looks good, he wouldn't want, he'd want them hidden. The unit looks back up at the boy holding his hand and nods a little.

"Cool," says 59.

"C-cool," says the unit, and follows.

—

The kid settles in nice at the Skylark Motel. He’s the youngest guy in the motel by at least a couple years, although he’s real foggy on how old he is, how long the Duke had him. Months, if not a year or two. The kid remembers Deluxe, in primary colors. Blocks of white, people poking at him, operating rooms.

He admits to 59—and 59 relays to Rayon—that the kid feels like there are holes burned into him, seared empty spots where he used to know things. Where he used to know _people—_friends, or family, he doesn’t know. There’s damage in his memories that even the Duke can’t be blamed for. Somebody up there messed him up too, and even if it wasn’t in the same vicious, greedy, carnal way the Duke did, it’s left scars. Scars like his surgical seams, precise and hidden under the mess he’s been in, but impossible to ignore.

Rayon is intending to let him stay as long as he wants, maybe let him wander around cleaning rooms or working with 103 in the kitchen. He wouldn’t be high in the ranking—somewhere in the 200s maybe—

Except then, one day when Rayon is doing his accounts for the quarter and 17 is working on the kid’s programming, the kid blinks and says “...I think I, I, I think I know, how to. Fix that.”

17 looks up at him and frowns. Rayon glances up, briefly distracted from his work—he’s had to step in less and less these days during the programming sessions, but there’s still always a possibility that something will trigger and the kid will dissolve into a shaking, stammering, sobbing mess.

“What do you mean, you know how to fix it?” says 17.

“Um.” The kid rolls his lips in for a second, like he regrets saying anything, then glances over at Rayon and dares to sit forward a little. “C-can I…?”

“Uh…sure?” says 17, baffled, and sits back, and the kid twitches, eyes flashing.

He presses his hands together, breathes out, spreads them fast and screens flare in front of him like a glowing wall, six or seven of them, mapping some complex, cascading structure. Parts of it shift and move, constantly separating and recombining. The kid stares up at the structure on the screens, and his eyes light up and _glow, _constant and bright, not flickering anymore.

“It, it’s the—c-c-c-code structure they, they _ah—_” He twitches, and the screens spark but don’t vanish. “Th-they’re using in Deluxe, now. Wwwwwwe started. There’s new. A back door, it’s n-not root but it’s better than, _hh_. Works better than. Brute-forcing it. I think I can get it o-open?”

There’s a moment or two of silence.

“...We?” Rayon repeats.

“Huh?”

“You said ‘we started’,” says 17. “Who’s we?”

“R&D,” says the kid matter-of-factly, and then blinks, eyes going wide. “It—I was—I was in—R&D. I think? I—yeah! I was was was, _ha!_” He grins at them, and it makes his whole pale, skinny face light up, his eyes glowing in the light from his screens. “I was, I _r-r-remember!_”

“Kane Co. R&D,” 17 says, and whistles softly. “...I’m guessin’ you don’t remember any of the really juicy stuff, there’s no way they’d throw you down here with anything useful in your brain.”

The kid wilts. Rayon gives 17 a look—17 flushes.

“—But that’s still really good!” he says, and looks over the screens with a new interest. “A back door, you said?”

It doesn’t stop there. The kid starts spending more time on those brilliant, bright blue screens—Deluxe blue, or maybe Skylark blue, or maybe just blue like his eyes. Starts to cautiously make tiny fixes on his own, always seeking out Rayon or 17 afterward to confess what he did like he expects to get in trouble for it. He creeps into the monitor room and sits with the guys on guard there, peering shyly at their tech, picking at his skinless metal finger.

Those are the good days. Maybe one day out of a week, the first couple of weeks, the kid makes it down to the lobby all dressed and upright, eyes focused on what’s in front of him. He’s definitely not 100%, but it’s good to see. 17 takes the opportunity while he’s awake and willing to dig into the nastier stuff that the Duke buried in his brain; hidden stuff, buried in him like shards of glass. “sluttbot.!!” and “paintool.pch”. Experimental android programs ripped incomplete from half-assed untested codes.

There’s one horrible session where 17 tries to do something small and simple and the kid starts screaming and _screaming _and doesn’t stop, punishment programs tearing into him for a horrible minute and a half until 17 finally brute-forces an override and shuts him down. When the kid finally wakes up from that, he’s a shaking, jittering mess again. He stays that way for almost a week, and 17 is so distraught he keeps making off-handed references to how there might be a spot for him on a higher number, and Rayon has a headache pretty much constantly.

The kid finally snaps out of it after five days, in one last terrible, shaking attack. Rayon gets yanked out of bed at four AM, and when he gets down to the kid’s room he knows what he’s going to see. A skinny body huddled up next to the bed, staring at somebody nobody else can see; he’s yanked off his shirt, his pants are shoved halfway off his hips. He’s not fighting the hands on him, not throwing them off, but he’s barely breathing either. When somebody tries to grab the waistband of his sweatpants to pull them up he catches his breath harshly and goes completely frozen-still, paralyzed, submitting.

17 has gone through his programming over and over, and these sudden, intense attacks aren’t just a cyborg thing, he says. It's the kid's brain, the trauma coming back around. 59 says his shrink knows about stuff like this, that they're called flashbacks, that they'll fade.

Rayon doesn't like it either way. He's a fan of problems that can be handled. Getting the kid away from the Duke, that was a problem, and Rayon fixed it. This, he has no way of repairing. All he can do is be there, because apparently he means _safety._ The kid is both scared of him and trusts him, somehow, which means Rayon can ground him when no one else can. Rayon keeps to himself how unsettling that is.

So here he is. This must be an especially bad one though, because the kid barely seems to register his presence. Just makes a soft, panicky noise in the back of his throat, hands white-knuckled by his sides. Just lets his knees fall open, eyes squeezed shut like he wants to be anywhere but here.

"Hey," says Rayon, and drops to one knee. The others shuffle back out of his way, and the kid gasps in a breath as the hands leave his skin. "You with me, Bright-eyes?"

It was just a joke nickname the first time somebody said it, but—hell, the kid doesn’t have a name he can remember, and it seems to get through to him. Cuts through the panic. And sure enough the kid blinks, makes a subvocal little whining noise. Manages, "I'm… I, I hear—I'm s-s-s-sorry, sorry, I'm sorry—" Blinks, shaking that off. "I'm not, his, I'm not, I'm, I—?" A gasping breath, another one, blinking. His eyes are wet. "Am I...?"

"You're not the Duke's anymore," Rayon says firmly.

"I'm not," the kid repeats. Sniffs, shakes his head jerkily. "I'm not."

"No."

"I need to—"

"You don't have to do anything," says 33 solidly. There's a round of agreement from the other two guys around the room. The kid sniffs again, and his pupils shrink and grow and shrink again, recalibrating, going from wide, absent pits to sharp pinpricks as he finally starts to breathe. "You're a Skylark now, kid. You remember, right?"

"I remember," the kid repeats. Rakes his nails at his fuzz of golden hair. "I re-re-re-remember. I'm sorry. Sir. Rayon."

"No problem," says Rayon, and pushes himself up. He doesn't go so far as to offer a hand, but mostly because he knows the others will get a hold of the kid's arms, helping him upright, getting him on his feet.

"Can I, can, can I do anything for—?"

"What did we talk about?" says Rayon evenly, before that thought can even catch in the kid's head. Usually the reminder is enough, but the kid ducks his head this time, lips pressed thin and cheeks red. "Focus. What did we talk about?"

"..._Don't be needy,_" the kid mumbles.

"No," says Rayon sharply—tempers his tone as the kid winces back from it. "...No. Tellin' us what you need is good. What we talked about is what it means to be a Skylark.”

The kid blinks, and some of the presence comes back to his eyes. He breathes out shakily, sniffs, catches his breath. Even more encouraging, he reaches down and self-consciously tugs his pants up, folds his arms across his bare chest. He’s shy about his body whether he’s overwhelmed or not, but he only acts on it when he remembers he’s free.

“Somebody’s got your back_,_” he says, small and soft but clear. “...’S what it means.”

“What do you owe people?”

“Respect,” says the kid obediently, and hesitates, catching on the words. “...I-i-if they—if they earn it.”

“What else?”

“Not a goddamn thing!” chorus the other guys there, and the kid lets out a wet little laugh and the other guys join in. Somebody wraps an arm around the kid’s shoulders, shaking him a little. “Good to have you back, Bright-eyes,” 73 is saying, and people start to break away, relieved now that the crisis seems to be over. The kid laughs again, shakily, and scrubs at his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” he says, soft and shaky, a knee-jerk reaction. “...’M sorry. I’ll be, I’m okay now. Seriously.”

“Nothin’ to be sorry for,” says Rayon, and stretches a little, cracking his back. “I’m goin’ back to bed. You good, kid?”

“Yes, sir,” says the kid. “Th-thank you.”

Rayon asks 17, the next day, about overrides.

“I mean, they’re built into the framework of his enhancements,” 17 says, and combs his hair back. He’s starting to get grey hairs around his temples, Rayon notes, and he’s pretty sure they weren’t there before the kid came along. 17 needs some vacation time. “I think we can set it up so any override order has to run past you for confirmation before he acts on it, but…”

“Is that as close as we can get to shutting the whole thing down?”

“Just about.” 17 sighs. “...Deluxe set the system up, all the way down to the root of his programming. Control freaks, the whole mess of ‘em.”

Rayon nods to himself. “Set that up for me, if you can,” he says, and stands up. “...And then you’re on vacation.”

The kid looks incredibly touched when 17 pulls him into the office and explains what they want to do. Staggered by it, incredulous, like he is every time somebody tries to give some agency back to him instead of taking it away.

"You could override me," he says. "I, I know, I believe, I trust you."

"I appreciate it," says Rayon, "—But I won't be doin' that. If I could take the overrides out, I would, but this is as close as we can get, for now. You good with that?"

"Yessir," says the kid, eyes brilliant and bright and a little bit wet. "Yes, I'm, good."

He is, too. Something about knowing that nobody can control him, that Rayon's the only one who could take hold of him like that and he's not going to—it seems to unlock some part of him he was holding back. He starts talking more, glitching less. Starts asking questions and tinkering with things around the hideout and _making _things from pieces of old scrap Rayon can't (won't) trade with the Duke anymore. He sticks some kind of ridiculous battery pack to the break room microwave and makes it about three times more powerful, makes cobbled-together lamps and transmitters, and somehow manages to fix the ancient prop phones. He starts sitting in when the cars need maintenance, getting his hands dirty, absorbing information at a fantastic rate.

The more bored he gets, the more confident he grows, the more he fixes, improves, completely alters anything he can get his hands on. Poking at his own programming, upgrading the security cameras. He opens himself up at the seams and fixes his own knee, god knows how, and shows 17 with a shy, glowing smile how he can bend and move and bear his weight without wincing now.

Rayon keeps an eye on it. He doesn't make decisions hastily, and there's a lot of men in the motel with a lot of skills. But the kid's got something. A spark, a drive, even through all the scars and the mess people have made out of his brain.

The kid comes into the lounge a few days after he fixes his leg, and the entire gang is there, waiting for him, with Rayon in the middle of them. He stops dead in the doorway, eyes round, and stares at them all like he's waiting for somebody to grab him.

"Uh," he says, choking on it. "Uh—uh, I, I'm, I..."

"Be cool, Bright-eyes," says Rayon quietly, and pushes himself up from his couch, stepping forward. The kid's eyes fix on his face, worried and confused. "Look. You've been doin' a good job these past couple months. People have been noticing.” He reaches up, tips his glasses down with a finger. “..._I've_ been noticing."

There's a murmur of agreement. The kid glances around, still drawn in on himself nervously. Rayon gives him a smile, half-turns his head and nods for 3, who comes forward with a bundle of dark fabric in his hands, a number displayed proudly on the folded jacket.

"Welcome to the Skylarks,” says Rayon. “22.”

There’s a general outcry of congratulations. The kid blinks around at everybody, looks back at Rayon with huge, startled, wondering eyes. “I…” he says, and stares down at the suit, the number emblazoned on the back, as 3 sets it gently in his arms. “M-m-me? But—I’m, I mean, I’m. _Me._”

“We know,” says 2 quietly, and leaves it at that.

—

The kid's been officially working as Skylark 22 for a couple weeks when he comes to see Rayon. Rayon happens to be free, so he waves the kid in, raising an eyebrow when he just keeps opening his mouth and closing it again, jittering. He's blushing darker by the second, but he does that sometimes, gets himself all worked up over the weirdest stuff.

He closed the door behind him, so Rayon lets himself smile a little as he cocks an eyebrow. Wouldn't do to let anyone see him getting soft with the kid. “What’s up, Bright-eyes?”

The nickname gets him to relax a little, at least, although the blush gets worse if anything. “I, um. I wondered, sir, if maybe I—if you, might, if I c-c-could—”

He's gotten better at talking, but any stress still has him chewing up his own sentences. Rayon lifts his brows pointedly.

The kid jerks, hunches his shoulders and hastily straightens again, maybe remembering what Rayon's had to say about posture. “Yessir! I, I just thought, um, maybe I could… do something for you.”

They've been here before, and from the way he goes red and drops his eyes for a moment, maybe he's remembered a little too late that previously Rayon hasn't been thrilled about it.

Rayon tilts his head to one side, keeps his face still and cool as a reflex. “We been over this. Thought I'd been pretty clear that wasn't your job anymore. Was I not clear about that, 22?”

“No sir!” 22 says, panicked. “You were very clear, sir!”

“Alright,” Rayon says. “Then you _know_ you don't owe me that, and I'm not gonna ask you for it. And neither is anyone else—”

“That's the _problem!_” 22 breaks in, half-wailing, then realizes he's interrupted Rayon and huddles into himself, plucking nervously at the fingertips of his driving gloves.

Rayon tips his shades down so he can narrow his eyes at the kid. 22’s blush is going all blotchy now, fading in patches, and he looks like he's about three seconds from calling this off and fleeing for the door. Rayon sighs silently and reminds himself the kid being here Iike this is a _good_ thing. He's got a problem and came to Rayon with it instead of assuming it didn't matter or he was supposed to be suffering or some twisted shit, this is _progress_.

He quashes the flicker of irritation, makes his voice calm. “Alright. Tell me why that's a problem.”

22 swallows. “I,” he says, “I just, I want to…” He waves an inarticulate black-gloved hand and gives Rayon a desperate, hopeful look.

“You want to have sex,” Rayon guesses.

22 nods gratefully. Rayon blinks behind his shades. He kind of assumed once the kid broke free of his trained sexbot reflexes, he wouldn't want to be touched by someone else for a year at least, maybe forever. He's pretty sure launching back into sex a couple months into freedom after being used that way for who knows how long is just a bad idea.

“How ‘bout you wait on that a month or two,” he says. “When you're real clear that there are some times you don't have to obey anyone, and that you get to decide what you want and what you're gonna do about it, then you can think about if you wanna pick someone to try that with.”

The kid fidgets. “I-I wanted—wanted, I picked _you_,” he says, low-voiced.

Rayon opens his mouth, and then stops and closes it again, letting that sink in. If 22 is telling the truth, not just saying what he thinks Rayon wants to hear, then this is actually totally new territory. Actually making a decision on his own and then going after what he wants, that would be _serious _progress. Rayon kind of thinks he ought to get some positive reinforcement here—except there's no way Rayon’s gonna sleep with the kid. For… god, so many reasons.

“Well, good for you. Glad you knew you had a choice,” he says, giving the kid a bit of a sharp look to check.

The kid nods quickly. “No, sir, I, I know. I know I don’t have to.”

“Good,” Rayon says, and gets a small, cautious smile, hope hovering around the edges. The kid is ridiculously cute when he's not looking hangdog and scared.

But that doesn’t change how this is gonna go. Rayon sits back in his chair, keeps his voice even. Not harsh, not cold, but level and cool.

“...That’s good,” he says again. “But it's not gonna happen. Not with me. Besides, you're not ready for that kind of stuff, kid. You just—”

“What stuff?” the kid says. “Please, I—just tell me what, how to get myself ready, I will, I promise, I'll be good—”

Rayon fights the urge to rub his temples. He walked right into that one. “No,” he says shortly, “not what I meant. You're not ready for _sex_ , kid. Not until you can stop worryin’ about _bein’ good_. That ain't what sex is about; it's supposed to be people havin’ fun together, not one of them _serving_ the other.” Unless that's what both of them are into, but this isn't the time to introduce complications to the theory.

The kid stares at him, blinking, trying to take that in. That's fine. He can take as long to think about that as he wants.

“Right now, you gotta give yourself some time, and work on,” Rayon fumbles a bit, turns it seamlessly into a brief, meaningful pause. “...Feelin’ good on your own, so you know you don't need anybody else for that, and—”

“Feeling good?” the kid asks.

Rayon sighs. “Jackin’ off, Bright-eyes.”

The kid's brows pull together in confusion, then alarm, eyes going round, and he shakes his head hard. “No sir! No, I can't do, don't touch don't—I'm not authorized, I c-_can't—_”

“Whoa, cool it,” Rayon says, raising a hand, and waits until he settles a little, breathing hard, hands working at his sides. Bright blue eyes wide and scared on Rayon.

Rayon runs a thumb along the clean-shaven part of his jaw, back and forth, frowning. “Not authorized accordin’ to _who_, kid?”

The kid blinks, frowns a little, and the glow of his eyes flickers rapidly for a few seconds. “I—don’t know,” he admits. “It's just—wrong. Can't do that.”

“This can't be from any of the trash that maniac jammed in your head, 17 and you took care of all that,” Rayon says. “And I told you all his _rules_ for you were gettin’ ditched, yeah?”

The kid nods readily enough.

“Okay. So where's the hang-up, here?” Rayon says. “Cuz you _are_ damn well authorized now, he can't stop you anymore and ain't no one else gonna get in your way. In your free time, in your room by yourself, no one gives a damn what you do, 22.”

The kid jerks a little at the address and snaps his shoulders straight, starting to look kind of panicky again. “I, I, yessir. But I'm—I'm not, I can't touch. Feels wrong.” He pauses, chewing on his lip while Rayon frowns at him. “...I don’t want to,” he says in a very small voice. “I’m. S—I’m, I’m scared. Sir, I don’t w-want. To.”

...Right. Well… okay. That makes sense, unfortunately. Those punishment routines 17 weeded out when he deleted the Duke's code patches, some of them could've been set to go off if the kid disobeyed an order, so he'd get hurt even while the Duke wasn't around. If he tried, for instance, touching himself to relieve the relentless arousal that was apparently standard—yeah, that would make him pretty damn reluctant to ever try it again.

Well, shit. Rayon can't just say ‘get over it,’ that's not how this trauma crap works. Man, he hates not being able to _fix_ it.

...It's just fear, though. You can get past fear, it just takes some doing.

Rayon cocks his head at the kid. “You're gonna have to learn how to do it yourself before anybody else has any business touchin’ you,” he says, and the kid’s hands press hard against his thighs. For a second it looks like he might cry, and Rayon lifts a hand, trying to forestall him. “You got any clue about what might help? Like, you know you don't have to take anybody's orders about this kind of—about sex, anymore, but… if I order you to get yourself off when you get back to your room, you think that'll help?”

The kid blinks a few times, then winces and shakes his head quick.

Rayon gives in and rubs a thumb against the tension in one temple. “Right,” he sighs. “Not the same as someone else touchin’ you.” He stops, frowns. “Mm. What if…” This is a real bad idea, he shouldn't let the kid involve him at all, should just leave him to sort himself out—except that he's scared to even try, so that sorting's gonna go nowhere real fast. And Rayon can fix this, he thinks, without even touching the kid, without even being in the same room.

“What if you go back to your room,” he says, “and I comm you, and tell you what to do?”

The kid chews on his lip. “Maybe?” he says doubtfully.

He's free to doubt it, as long as he's willing to try. “All right,” Rayon says. “I got people to talk to in a minute, here, but you think you can be in your room two hours from now? I ought to have a moment free.”

The kid nods, still frowning and anxious. He opens his mouth, closes it again without saying anything.

“Spit it out, kid,” Rayon says, not unkindly.

The kid hunches, eyes dropping. “What if it s-s-still hurts?” he says very quietly.

“No reason it should. But if it does, then you stop touchin’ and we'll take a harder look at what's goin’ on there.”

“But it'll be hurting,” the kid mumbles, “it didn't stop, it just kept going, until he fixed—” he stops, squeezes his eyes shut. “I don't—I, I'd rather just—please can, can you, can, c-can I—”

“Whoa, hey,” Rayon breaks in as the kid's breathing speeds up and his body tenses, hands working. “It _won't_ keep hurting, alright, 17 got rid of all that crap. You were there, you watched him do it. You _helped _him do it.”

“But what if it _does?_” the kid whispers.

Rayon considers him. “What are you sayin’, Bright-eyes? You don't wanna risk it? Your choice, you get to make that call one way or the other.”

The kid jitters a minute, then swallows and looks up. “No,” he says, “I, I'll risk it. But. I want a, a backup plan.”

That’s a statement, not a question. Not only is that a step forward, it’s a pretty reasonable boundary to set. Rayon sits back in his chair and nods slowly.

“...Alright,” he says. “If you hurt, at this point, it ain't a programming glitch, so 17 won't be able to help—” The kid’s shaking his head. “Okay. What's your thought?”

“You,” he says steadily, eyes on Rayon's face. “If you touch, me, it'll s-s—it, it won't hurt anymore.”

Rayon is grateful for his shades because they hide the startled look he gives the kid. “So, what, you want me to be ready to show up at your door and fix it if it hurts?”

The kid shakes his head. “If you're right there, already,” he says, and stops, mouth opening and nothing coming out as the strain of asking for something twists him up inside.

...If Rayon is there, in the kid's room, while instructing him in how to handle his own dick. Yeah, that's great.

He eyes the kid for a moment just in case this is a trick, a way to get Rayon closer to having sex with him, but that skinny frame is still hunched and twitchy with anxiety, blue eyes big and scared on Rayon's face, and he already knows the kid's no good at lying convincingly. He's sincere. He'll feel safest with Rayon… close to hand, so to speak.

Rayon _can't_ turn him down, not when he's trying this hard.

Great. This is just gonna go really well.

—

The unit sits on his bed and jitters.

He’s been sitting on his bed jittering for forty-four minutes and three seconds, and he’s told himself, he’s made a _rule, _he’s given an override to to to himself, he’s going to call Rayon when it’s been forty-five minutes. A couple of times he’s almost made the call, just to say _no, never mind, don’t worry about it, I don’t need—_but he _does._ He needs this. It’s just—

It’s just…

It’s just that he spent so long at the mercy of his body, the things he felt, the things his owner _made _him feel. For the first couple of days it was a relief not to be touched anymore, and then he started to get...twitchy. And then he started to get jittery, restless, itchy and needy and uncomfortable in his skin. He’s used to being played with almost every day, and here all of a sudden there’s nobody, nothing. Just friendly arms around his shoulders or hands ruffling his hair. He doesn’t miss… _bot _and _baby _and _you pretty little—_but if one more handsome, stylish strong scary handsome man pats his back and calls him “kiddo” he’s going to do something drastic.

...Like going to Rayon, and asking him to be there while the unit tries to to to, tries, tries to do something unauthorized.

It’s been forty-four minutes and fifty seconds, and 22 is starting to move to pull up his comms, when there’s a single soft, precise knock on the door and the unit startles so hard he almost topples over.

“Y-y-yes!” he squeaks, and then clears his throat, swallows, lowers his voice. “Come in!”

Rayon steps in, pausing briefly as he sees the unit perched tensely on the edge of his bed. One eyebrow twitches up, but he just closes the door behind him and steps over to the chair by the wall.

“Breathe, Bright-eyes,” he says, taking a seat.

The nickname makes a weird, surprised little happy thrill run through the unit, like it always does. It’s not embarrassing, really—how could it be, after… the stuff he’s done. But it’s something like that.

“I'm a couple minutes late; you get started without me, or—” Rayon stops and his lips thin. “You don't have to take your clothes off unless you want to, remember? You wanna put your shirt back on or you okay like this?”

The unit struggles for a second, processing all the options all the choices all the the all the things he has to answer. “I,” he starts, careful and deliberate, trying to keep his voice steady. “Wouldn’t. Start without you. And I remember, I have a ch, a choice. Um… H-hi, hello, I, thank you f-f-for for for—” shit, Rayon’s eyebrows are raised, he’s messing this up, he’s messing everything up. “I don’t need it, a shirt, I don’t. Really. U-unless you… you don’t like… looking…?” He seemed to like how the unit looked, at the party.

But then again a lot of stuff has changed since the party. Rayon seemed to like 22 better when he thought the unit was just an android. At least, he didn’t look at him with that awful, cool pity.

Rayon nudges his sunglasses down a little to rub a thumb between his brows, sighing. “This ain't about me, kid. Nothin’ to do with me, this is all about what _you like_. If you like bein’ shirtless, that's cool, that's the important thing.” He pauses, frowning slightly. “You gotta get clear that you're not here for me, alright? You're here to figure out makin’ yourself feel good. I'm just… incidental.”

“I-I know!” He does, he knows, he listened he knows. The unit nods hurriedly, finds himself waving his hands in the air—stops it immediately. “I know, b-but…” He’s messing it up, messing it all up, _stop messing it up_. Fix it. He’s gotten used to people telling him what they want, but the Duke didn’t. The unit just has to start paying attention again, figuring out what’s expected by context. He’s good at he’s good at telling what works, what he should keep doing. He had to be. And Rayon likes how he looks, and he would like it more probably if he could see more skin, so it would be better if he said… “—I like it.”

“Alright,” Rayon says, leaning back in his chair. “That's good.” His lips turn up at one corner. “You're gonna need your dick out.” He opens his mouth again, hesitates and adds, “And lube. Saw you put in a request downstairs for some, you get that yet?”

Oh. _Right, _of course, stupid, should have had that done first. Prep work, gotten himself ready. Except—that would be touching himself and he’s still not—he can’t can’t can’t _can’t CAN’T_ do that, it’s so far from allowed. That was the first order, that was the thing that got him punished more than anything else. Just thinking about it makes the anxiety spike up like a knife in the back, a physical jolt of headache and nausea.

But Rayon’s here this time, he’s here and he said to and that makes it okay. It’s okay, it’s okay it’s okay.

22 opens his pants, shoves them down out of the way. His hands are still shaking when he slicks up one palm, but his body doesn’t seem to have gotten the message because he can _feel _himself getting turned on, the hot ache in his skin, the over-awareness of his body. He may be terrified, but he’s been terrified for so long it’s practically background noise.

He works his hand a little, licks his lips at the soft, slick sound and then glances up hopefully at the silent, black-suited figure across the room from him.

“Good,” Rayon says. His brows pull together slightly. “Hey, breathe, kid. You're fine, you're doin’ good.”

22 breathes, too fast at first, following orders, then slower and steadier. The way 59 has been showing him. He nods, shaky, and Rayon nods back.

“Alright, get a feel for it. Just touch a little, mess around, see what it feels like.”

It’s—an order, it’s what he’s supposed to do, but—the unit starts to reach down, locks up, sucks in a shaky breath, tries again. Locks up. Tries, locks up. It’s not like being overridden, it’s _not, _he should be able to do this but he can’t make his hands follow through. Every fiber of his body, organic or otherwise, is _screaming _alerts and warnings at him. Can’t, shouldn’t, not allowed. _See what it feels like._ Can’t, shouldn’t, not allowed.

“Hmm,” Rayon says after an endless minute of trying and failing. “Okay, hold up. Were you allowed to touch yourself at _all?_ Or was everything off-limits?”

Questions, okay, he can answer questions. The unit pulls pulls pulls his hand away, lets himself relax, rests for a second. “I,” he says, and stalls a little. “Uh. If I, if he he told me? I could t-t-touch other, other sssss—other p-places, for, hhhah, for him to w-watch. But not…” He glances down, chews his lip. The familiar combination of fear, anticipation and want have got him halfway hard, even if the idea of what he’s going to have to do tonight already has him kind of uncontrollably shaking.

“Alright,” Rayon says. “Back it off then, start small. Collarbone. Just gentle, take it easy for now.”

That’s—oh, he can do that. That’s so much easier. The unit moves, so fast he almost hits himself instead, hands that wouldn’t move jerking into life again. His fingers feel cold against his skin, he can still feel himself shaking, but it eases as he follows orders. The instincts that were screaming a second ago quiet to a contented purr. _Good, follow orders, be good, make it look nice._

He does, too. He can see it, situational analysis implants mixing seamlessly into the remnants of terrified hyper-vigilance. Rayon doesn’t like to broadcast, to show to make things clear, but the Duke didn’t like to show how he felt either. Rayon’s body language is restrained, quiet where the Duke’s yelled, but he's not as blank as he thinks he is. The shift the change the slightest changes in the way he’s sitting, the tiny uptick in the rate of his breathing. _Doing good be good make it look good for your owner._

And the touch…feels good, too. It does, he can feel that. It’s nice. But not as nice as the feeling of safety, retreating back into what he was rebuilt for.

“Good,” Rayon says again, good his owner’s pleased it's good he's good. “Now down your chest, nice and slow. However feels good.”

The unit knows what he’s what he wants what he’d like to see. It’s scarier than the collarbone, waiting for the hurt, but the piercings are gone and and and Rayon’s not going to order him to hurt himself, he’s _not. _ He wouldn’t, he’s not. So it would just…feel nice.

He’s not going to say it out loud, though, not unless he’s pushed, unless he has to. So he just strokes a thumb past one nipple instead, back and forth, breath catching as he gets used to the feeling. He’s not bruised anymore, it’s not it’s not it’s not too much like it used to be, and he doesn’t have to pinch or twist or hurt or hurt or hurt himself. Glances up at Rayon, waiting, hoping.

Rayon smiles a little. “That's good. Go for what you like. Keep touchin’ whatever you want for a little while here, just get used to it, alright?”

_Whatever you want. _

That’s…hard, that’s open-ended. Hard to figure out what it means, what he’s supposed to want—

_…You’re not here for me, alright?_

Shit. No, god, he’s doing it again, he’s going there again, he’s not _for _that anymore. Rayon said said said told him so, this isn’t for him to watch, this is for feeling good. 22 is supposed to learn, he’s _gotta _learn how to do this.

22 slides his hand back up, frowning, forces himself to close his eyes. Doesn’t watch Rayon his registration his owner his—doesn’t watch, to see how he reacts. Just touches the side of his throat, feels out the line of his jaw. He can feel his own pulse, knows the count in his head and feels it out with his fingertips. Heart racing, breath trembling. The place behind his ear that his—that the the the Duke kissed him there once just one time when he felt nice and gentle just once, and it felt nice, and touching that spot makes his whole body shiver so he stops.

His chest again his ribs his ribs still too clear under his skin. He’s learning about food, and about his implants. He’s learning about the slow starvation that was whittling away at whatever weight he had when Deluxe threw him away. Counts his ribs with the tips of his fingers, distracted from feeling good for a second by the realization that he can feel his own bones. The structure the structure the unit’s—infrastructure, he can—

_Shit, _ no, not the mission either, not the point. Feeling good, that’s the point. 22 gives one nipple a sharp pinch, catches his breath and chokes on a whimper. Focuses. Strokes a hipbone. Digs his nails in. _Focus._

“Hey,” Rayon says, and when the unit looks up he's frowning, pulls off his sunglasses, eyes sharp. “You playin’ rough ‘cause you like it?” And he must see the answer in the way the unit twitches, caught and guilty. He sighs. “Go easy, alright? This is about feelin’ good; if you don’t like it, don’t do it. You got that?”

Fucked it up. The unit shrinks a little bit, nods fast, makes his hands be his hands be his hands be gentle. He doesn’t, he doesn’t like it rough, doesn’t like it when it hurts. He likes feeling good, likes having those dark eyes on him likes doing good and being, being told. Misses knowing what to do, and hates missing it because missing that is missing Before and missing Before is missing the Duke, and he doesn’t, he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to.

_Go easy. _

_Breathe, Bright-eyes. _

22 goes easy. He breathes.

It doesn’t take more than a couple minutes of touching himself, feeling out his own skin, testing nerve endings and sensations, before he’s hot and twitchy and out of breath. It feels good, and it’s embarrassing, it’s both those things and he needs more, a _lot _more.

“You're doin’ good,” Rayon says, and his voice is just barely deeper than it was. He shifts position in his chair, ostentatiously relaxed, and maybe it's just a coincidence that when he shifts the unit stopped being able to see, to tell if he was being a good enough show. If he was turning his registration holder on, like he’s supposed to.

Not that it would matter if he did. Rayon could can should, he _wants, _the unit, but he doesn’t want him at the same time. Even if he gets hard he doesn’t want to touch the unit anyway, no matter what. Affected by the visual stimuli but just keeps on saying “no”, saying “we’re not doing that, Bright-eyes” and “It’s not gonna happen, kid”. It doesn’t make any _sense_.

“Thank you—sir,” the unit manages, and Rayon makes a noise kind of like he’s tired, or in pain, a groan but a strange one. A huff through his nose, sighing.

“Let’s try this,” Rayon says, instead of saying why saying what, how the unit can make him happier. What he’s doing wrong. “Keep touchin’, you don’t have to stop, just get your other hand down there. Doesn’t have to be much, just your fingertips. Alright?”

Some part of the unit’s brain sobs at that because— _ no not gentle not slow don’t tease don’t make me wait please I’ll be good _ —and then his brain catches up with his thoughts his stupid his pathetic thoughts and he’s—_mad_. Nobody is teasing him except him, he’s being _stupid _and he should be able to do this, he’s going to _prove_ he can do this.

His hand jerks at the last second, his slick fingers drag at the inside of his thigh, and then he’s, he’s he’s he’s, he, touching, he’s, oh, _god _that’s too much, that’s_, fuck. _He can’t he’s not allowed but it feels so good he can’t let go, can’t breathe can’t can’t move can’t stop.

The tiny seed of rational thinking, the one sarcastic voice in his head that floats above the anxiety and fear, points out how phenomenally _dumb _he probably looks just sitting there poleaxed grabbing his dick. The rest of him is trapped in a feedback loop of _I want I can’t I want I can’t I want I CAN’T._

“Good!” Rayon says, sounding a little startled. “Hey, good, there you go, Bright-eyes. Try strokin’ a little. Get it so it feels right, feels good, figure out if you need it fast or slow at first.”

“Hh_hhah_,” says the unit, faint and wheezy and regretting everything forever. _Might not be me touchin’ you, baby, but it sure as _hell _won’t be you, will it?_ “Nnnh.” He was—ordered to but he was ordered not to but _order invalidated _the other was was was cancelled but it’ll hurt, it always _hurts._ It feels so good. It’s going to hurt, any second now. Any second. “I, _hh,_ I c— I-I, _hhah_, I, I, I, I—”

“Hey,” Rayon says, “come on now, breathe, remember? You're fine, you're doin’ good. It's okay.” He tilts his head, eyes narrowing in consideration. “How ‘bout you try movin’ both hands, that one and the one on your chest. Just a little, just—stroke once, touch a little.”

Move once. Simple order. Hand on his chest, that’s easy. Easier. The hand on him on his on on on on it’s not as easy. His grip is too tight, the lube’s dried up too much. When he tries to loosen his grip his hand jerks and shakes so badly he almost loses his grip completely, curling around himself, trying to focus.

He’s allowed. It feels good and he’s allowed and he’s allowed to feel good he’s allowed. He can. Rayon wants him to. Quiet and wants him to, gentle and wants him to, _saved him _and wants him to do this. For himself, for feeling good, he’s supposed to.

22 surprises himself when his hand finally moves. He didn’t realize he was doing it, that he was going to do it, and the feeling of being touched so unexpectedly punches a broken squeak of shock out of him. He bites his lip until it feels like he’s about to break skin. Shifts his grip. Tentatively, moves again. Still too dry, but—_god, _but _fuck._

“Good, that's right,” Rayon says. “How's it feel, that slick enough for you?”

_Don’t complain don’t whine don’t bother him _ wars with _this is for you, don’t lie, make it feel good._ Maybe—not an order, maybe a suggestion? Solves the problem. Don’t have to answer. He can’t take his hand away ( _goodit’sgoodit’sgoodfeelssogood_) but he reaches with the other hand, fumbling for the bottle. Drops it, gets lube on the bedspread, _stupid_, flinches, can’t stop. Gets some messily on his slick hand, and _god _it’s even better, how is it _better?_ He doesn’t mean to make noise but it tears out of him anyway, a harsh little moan on every slow, jerky stroke.

“Good,” Rayon murmurs, and watches quietly for a minute. “Try slowin’ down, speedin’ up, see what feels best. You're tryin’ to find out what you like, what's good, remember. And if it feels nice, you can touch whatever else you want at the same time. Hell, you can use both hands on your dick if you want, or play with your balls, whatever. Go for it.”

_God._ 22 makes another noise, overwrought, rough and breathless, tries to get across in just a look that he’s _handling _this right now, okay, that’s…_a lot. _Like, way more stuff to even think about, when he’s struggling with the conflicting concepts of _touch _and _don’t scream _and _breathe_ and _don’t cry. _All he really manages is a wide-eyed, pleading look and a breathless whine, but that’s going to have to work because god oh oh oh god _fuck, _he’s not going to be able to do much of anything else.

Rayon chuckles softly. “Yeah, alright,” he says. “You take your time.” He slides his sunglasses back on, standing up. “Seems like you got the hang of things, so I'll leave you to it.”

No, _no, _it just started feeling good, it was so _good._ The unit gasps, swallows a sob—but he’s good he’s a good good he’s good, and he won’t. He takes his hands away, drops his head back against the headboard. Chokes off another sob. He _wants, _but he’s wanted before. He won’t. He can’t, he won’t.

Rayon frowns sharply. “What are you—” He stops, takes a breath. “Alright. Are you stoppin’ because—look, you know you're allowed to touch yourself now, and you know it's got nothin’ to do with me. So there's no damn reason you shouldn't be able to keep doin’ that after I go.” He pauses, tugs absently at the cuffs of his sleeves, straightening them. “What am I missin’?”

“I…need.” It takes so much to focus on the words, to get them out in order, to make him _understand. _The unit shudders, grabs the sheets, can’t stop his hips from rocking. “I need, you I need you I need need n-need you here, I can’t, sir, sir, my D— My my my my my— _Sir, _please, I need you…”

Rayon sighs. “Alright,” he says quietly. “Alright, fine. Keep doin’ what you were doin’, I'll… stick around, this time.” He sits down, straight-backed, hands on his knees. The unit crumples, relief almost as intense as the feeling of his hand sliding down to touch himself again.

“Thank you,” he says, and means every word, means it so much he can hardly keep his voice from breaking. 22 cries easily, now that he’s allowed. Too easily, at times he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t want to now, doesn’t want to ruin the kill the vibe the moment to mess up the mood. “I-I’m sorry, I might, it’s gonna be, I might be loud, I’ll t-try not to. ‘M sorry.” Because it’s one thing for a sexbot to be noisy, to scream and moan at the slightest touches, but he’s not, anymore. Rayon knows, he likes his men to be, to to to classy, he likes them cool and quiet and controlled.

Rayon snorts, though, like he said something silly, unnecessary. “You be as loud as you want, Bright-eyes, that’s not somethin’ to apologize for. If you're by yourself, ain't no one got a right to tell you to keep it down, and if you're not...well. Pretty sure nobody’s gonna have a problem with you lettin’ them know how good they’re doing.”

22 isn't completely sure about that, although he's gained some found some he's, he's found more and more evidence that just because the Duke said something or did something, that doesn't mean it's right. The rest of the guys have been… really, really clear about that. So just because the Duke did things to him, yelled at him for being too loud sometimes, that doesn't mean everybody thinks it's bad.

"You like it," he says, testing, and sees Rayon's brows twitch up. "Wh-wh-when people are noisy. When, when they, how good you make them feel. When they let you know."

Rayon's brows pull together, and it's a minute before he answers. “Could be,” he says eventually, “but that's got nothin’ to do with this. Remember, you're not worryin’ what I like, this is about you. You make whatever kind of noise you want.”

That means “yes”, means he likes it. That’s—mission parameters, that doesn’t matter, isn’t supposed to matter, but it does. Rayon doesn’t want to touch him and—and that’s okay, but 22 needs him to approve, the unit needs to be good for him anyway.

“...Thank you,” says 22, and Rayon sighs but not really like he’s upset. Reaches up and pushes his fingers up under his glasses to rub the bridge of his nose.

“You’re welcome, kid,” he says, and waves a hand. “Come on, don’t get distracted. You’re gonna have to do this without me around, next time.”

That’s still...hard to think about, hard to contemplate, but 22 knows, he can’t, he won’t make his, his, he won’t ask Rayon to do this again. He’s—a Skylark. Fight your own fights. Fix your own problems. Touch your own goddamn dick.

“Yessir,” says 22, and means it. “I’ll, I, I, I’ll fix it. I’ll...handle it.”

—

Rayon is in the lobby about a week later when he sees the pattern for the first time.

He’s done his best to avoid thinking too much about the whole unfortunate _Jerking It 101_ thing, and generally speaking he’s good at compartmentalizing. One of his boys needed help; he helped. It’s done. He didn’t touch the kid—hell, 22 didn’t even try to get him to, so maybe he’s finally picking up on exactly how strict Rayon’s gonna be about that. And 22 promised he’d keep trying on his own, so the problem’s settled.

But it seems like maybe, just possibly, Rayon’s been trying so steadfastly to forget about it he’s… missed some stuff.

As he watches, 22 sidles up to the bar, halfway across the room. He slides in next to 128, grins nervously. For a while they just talk, chatting about something banal, and then… it happens.

22 leans in, cheeks flushing, and murmurs something. 128’s eyebrows raise over his glasses, and he takes a second to answer, skepticism all over his face. 22’s flush deepens; he laughs, awkwardly too loud even over the noise of the bar, and shakes his head, waving the point away. Pushes himself up abruptly, still talking, hands fluttering in aborted, nervous gestures as he babbles.

Rayon and 128 watch him as he hurries across the room and retreats into a corner, sipping at a bottle of water, red in the face. Then 128 raises his eyebrows again, shakes his head ruefully, and turns back to his drink.

Rayon doesn’t look away. He watches 22 finish his water, twisting and crumpling the recyclable bottle nervously between long fingers. When he’s finally reduced it to mangled pulp, he’s not blushing anymore; he pushes himself up, lips pressed into a thin line of determination, and marches back across the room, this time to the table where 93 is sitting. Settles down on the couch next to him, back really straight and eyes all wide and earnest.

And then he kind of...changes. It’s a subtle shift, but a noticeable one; he leans in closer, wide eyes going a little hooded, a little darker. Chews on his lip, licks it, says something quietly.

93 freezes for just a second, eyes darting over his face—then he puts a hand on the kids shoulder and says a single word, so simply and clearly Rayon can read his lips. _No._

The kid opens his mouth like he wants to argue; 93 shakes his head, squeezes 22’s shoulder and gives him a brief, worried smile. He starts to say something; 22 is already getting up again, looking more embarrassed and miserable than ever, smiling almost desperately wide. He goes power-walking away again, and 93 half-rises like he’s going to go after him and then settles back down, frowning at his retreating back, worry knotting his brows.

22 only tries his weird courting routine twice that night, but he tries another time a few nights later, and then two more a while after that, and by the time he starts edging closer to 69, who might be genuinely the scariest guy in Rayon’s gang, Rayon’s had just about enough.

“Hey,” he says in passing, and puts a hand on 22’s shoulder. The kid squeaks and jumps, and then goes “Oh, I, sir, hi!” with such transparent guilt it’s hard not to laugh.

“Walk with me,” says Rayon.

22 stays nervous and silent as they head back across the lounge to the furthest, quietest seats in the corner—perches on the edge of one seat and gives Rayon that look he’s getting so used to, nervous and shy and worried.

“Sorry,” he says, before Rayon can even say anything. Rayon doesn’t respond to that, and it only takes a second of waiting before the kid breaks the silence again. “I was just, I know, I don’t owe them, I just, wanted, I wanted to. Uh.”

Rayon considers that for a minute. On the one hand, it’s easy to look at 22 and remember how heinously the Duke fucked him up, to think of him as a traumatized victim who needs taken care of. On the other hand, he’s a young man who’s obviously got a healthy appetite for the sweeter things in life buried under the aforementioned trauma. And he’s in an entire building with more than a hundred of the handsomest, best-dressed, and most sexually-capable men in the city.

...And all of them call him things like “kid” and “little guy” and treat him basically like a kind of combination little brother and surrogate son. Huh, yeah, this probably feels like some kind of special hell, actually.

“...Nothin’ wrong with wanting to feel good,” Rayon says slowly, and resists the urge to tack a “kid” on the end of that sentence.

22 hunches and grimaces a little. Bursts out, “—Everybody’s _acting _like it, though! Like I, I, I, everybody’s acting like I don’t _know _what I—” he chokes on the words, makes a growling noise of frustration and crosses his arms. God, is he _sulking?_ That’s both endearing and incredibly stupid.

“You’ve been workin’ on...what we talked about?” Rayon says, instead of directly addressing that one—because that’s...a lot, and not something he necessarily feels up to right now. 22 nods quickly, uncrosses his arms to knot his gloved hands up in his lap.

“Yessir,” he says, and then, apparently worried that’s not sufficient, “I did, I, I did, three times, today, and it makes it stop for a while and then I just want to get…” he stumbles on the words, lowers his eyes to the floor. “...Touched,” he finishes, soft and longing.

Rayon resists the urge to sigh and pinch the bridge of his nose, but only with difficulty. God. So, what, it’s a combination of regular old horniness and touch-starvation. Plus the kid’s desperate enough to please everybody as-is, but _especially _in the bedroom—Rayon’s seen the look on 22’s face when somebody compliments him or tells him he’s doing a good job.

Alright, so, one problem solved, one new problem to handle. Their 22 doesn’t just want to get off, he wants the full-on lovemaking _experience, _and he’s obviously gotten desperate enough over the course of a few weeks he’s willing to go and actually _ask _for it. Which is...pretty desperate, for him.

“I know you don’t w-want, want, want me like that,” 22 says, still quiet, and stares down at his feet, taps the toes of his shoes together over and over again. “I didn’t want to—t-to tell, to ask, to bother you about it.”

“That’s not gonna happen, no,” Rayon acknowledges, and frowns, thoughtful. “...I got a couple ideas, but you’re gonna have to give me a second to get ‘em figured out. You think you can last another couple days?”

“Yessir,” says 22 immediately, although he looks kind of transparently agonized at the thought. “I can, whatever you want, I can do it.”

“Good,” says Rayon, and pushes his glasses up his nose, hides his eyes behind them. “Let me make a few calls.”

—

Mike is halfway through the usual very friendly but very intense negotiations with Rayon when The New Guy shows up.

He's wearing a suit, like every other guy in this motel, but he's not wearing the sunglasses and it's kinda startling how much it makes him stand out from the other men who're coming and going in the background. He looks young, too, no older than the Burners are, and when he walks in and sees somebody already there talking to Rayon, his eyes flash_. _Not like he's angry, like they actually _flash, _lighting up from the inside. For a second he just stands there, frozen, eyes flickering and sparking. Then Rayon turns back and looks at him, and the guy relaxes a little.

"22," says Rayon evenly. “You need somethin’?”

"Yessir," says 22—geez, that's a high rank for a guy Mike's age. His voice is quiet and higher-pitched than Mike would've expected, soft like he's afraid to be heard. "I'm, uh. 17 asked me to come and look at the wiring system in here. I'm, I'm sorry."

"Right." Rayon nods, turning back to the table. "Well. Not like we're talkin' secrets in here. Go ahead."

22 looks kind of like he would rather have come back at literally any other time, but he ducks his head and hurries forward into the room, throwing a couple of covert glances in Mike's direction, giving him a wide berth. Mike catches his eye on one of them, and gives the guy a friendly smile. The Skylark blinks, eyes widening, then he drops his head again and hurries over to a panel on the wall, fiddling with the lock. Rayon watches him for a second, with the slightest twist of a smile at the corner of his mouth, then looks back at Mike. "Where were we?"

"Uh…" Mike is having a little bit more trouble pulling his eyes away; 22 has pulled off his suit coat, baring surprisingly broad shoulders, and is rolling up his sleeves. He's wearing black driving gloves, and the combination of the black leather and his pale, leanly-muscled forearms is—really distracting.

"Mike."

"Huh?" says Mike, and turns back around to the table, blinking. "What? Yeah. What?"

The rest of the negotiations are kind of a mess. Mike keeps getting distracted by the movement at the corner of his eye, 22 is obviously trying to go as fast as possible and keeps dropping things, and Rayon seems to find the whole thing genuinely hilarious, if the minute twitch of his lips is any indication. They're just managing to wrap up when 22 straightens up and closes the panel as quietly as possible, reaching down to grab his jacket off the chair he slung it on.

"Wait a minute, 22," says Rayon.

22 jumps to be addressed and kind of whips around, eyes wide and jacket clutched close to his chest. "Yessir?!"

"Mike's going to need to see the machine we're working with before his gang can make us our parts,” Rayon says, and pushes himself smoothly up out of his chair, downing his drink in one shot. “Take him down to the garage with you.”

22 does _not _look pleased. “Oh,” he says, and kind of…stutters, a weird, jerky twitch through his head and one arm, eyes flashing in time. “O-o-o-oh. I, you I sh-should, you want?”

“Show him around the place,” Rayon says, and pushes himself up, straightens his jacket. “About time you met somebody your own age.”

—

The unit is, he’s, he’s not, he’s very tense, he doesn’t like this at all.

Mike Chilton has been to the motel a couple of times. The other Skylarks keep 22 back out of the line of sight when other gangs come to see Rayon, and he doesn’t mind, and he doesn’t, he’s never wanted to spend more time around the loud guys and the terrifying ladies who show up at the motel sometimes. But Mike Chilton isn’t all that loud and isn’t a terrifying lady. He’s just a guy, in a T-shirt with holes and stains and a jacket that makes his shoulders look really broad.

He moves like somebody who knows how to fight, too, even though he makes it look all friendly, bouncing on the balls of his feet and and always on the move. And his _car, _wow, his car, though, his car his car is _amazing_. The unit does want to see it, does want to see the engine system that goes with those heavy chrome vents on her sides. The boost Chilton uses to run packages for Rayon to cut through to go racing through the city making his deliveries.

“Hi,” says Mike Chilton, and holds out a hand to shake. “I’m Mike Chilton!”

22 stares down at his hand, at his fingers his hand all normal skin smooth, not altered. Olive-brown skin and cracked knuckles and a fingernail split.

He’s staring for too long, because Mike Chilton takes his hand back and says “...You okay, man?”

“Yes,” says 22 convulsively, and locks up on the words, mouthing silently for a long second. “I, I, I’m, I’m fine, I’m just. I just, don’t, uh. L-let’s go.”

“Oh!” Mike Chilton blinks, but a second later his friendly grin is back again, and he’s shoving his hands in his jacket pockets and bouncing along behind the unit, staring around the motel hallways as they go. “I’ve never seen you around here before, dude. Uh…”

“Uh?” 22 repeats.

“So, this is gonna sound weird, but…” Mike Chilton scratches the back of his neck awkwardly. “I know your number is 22, right, but what’s your name?”

The unit stutters, seizing up. "What?"

"Your name," says Mike Chilton again. "It's not— You don't— We don't know each other. Right?"

"What are you talking about?" says the unit.

"You just look like somebody I knew," says Mike Chilton, and tilts his head on one side, watching the unit with dark eyes. "A while ago, like, years ago." He shrugs, kind of awkward. “Before I came down here.”

"Oh," says the unit. There's nothing else to say.

"So—you don't recognize me?"

"I don't, d-don't know."

Mike Chilton frowns, confused. "You don't—?"

"I don't remember—Deluxe." The words fall out of order, like the memories he’s trying to find; all they make is a stupid load of nothing, nothing, nothing. "I don't remember anything. White. Blue. Buildings." _Lights. Straps. Surgery. _"I don't remember anyone. But, but nobody came, nobody helped when they were. Throwing me out. Nobody came to look for, hh, nobody— So, so, so, so I don't think I, I never had. Anyone."

He takes a deep breath, trying to get his thoughts and his words back in line; looks up, and Mike Chilton is watching him. Serious, sad, watching. Lips tight and hands shoved down in his pockets.

"...You okay, man?" he says, quiet.

22 shrugs, off-rhythm, one shoulder falling behind the other. "I'm, here. I'm here now, and I'm f-fine." That's inaccurate. "I'm getting b… better." He doesn't like talking about this, about where he came from, about how much they ripped out of his memory. He shakes his head, lengthens his stride so Mike Chilton has to half-jog to keep up. "Who was your friend?"

"Oh, just this kid I grew up with," Mike Chilton says, and for a second he looks almost sad. "It's not a big deal, I mean we lived together until we were fourteen, but I haven't seen him in… geez, years. He went into R&D, I went into Security, he just kinda stopped—" He stops talking, clears his throat. "...We grew apart, I guess."

"I was in R&D," says the unit. It's one of the only things he knows, a fact he can cling to. "Maybe I knew him. Your friend."

"Yeah," says Mike Chilton, and he still looks quiet and sad, distracted. "Maybe." He shakes it off after a minute, smiles at 22 again. “But you didn't tell me your name, dude!”

“Oh,” the unit says. “That's, I don't, I don't don't don't, I, I—” he stops, takes a breath. Starts again, slower. “I don't. Remember. Designation redacted. I don't know it.”

Mike Chilton doesn't answer right away, just staring at him with wide dark eyes. “Dang,” he says. “That _sucks_, man! So what do people call you, just your number?”

22 hesitates before nodding. He likes the nickname they've given him, but it feels like maybe, maybe that's just for people who know him. Not for someone he's just met, no matter how interesting Mike Chilton is.

“'Kay, got it!” Mike Chilton says cheerfully. “Nice to meet you, 22!”

22 does get to see Mike Chilton’s car, and she’s just as gorgeous as she looked from a distance, all green and chrome and dark interiors. The unit runs his hands over the curve of the windshield reverently and Mike Chilton smiles at him the whole time like—he likes, he likes the unit. He likes that 22 likes his car, and he likes 22.

He also seems nice, and he likes cars a _lot. _He keeps on throwing glances over at the cars parked a ways down from his, until the unit can’t stand it anymore and leads the way over to the closest one, perfect and streamlined and hole-in-the-universe black.

“This is Mr. Rayon’s private buick,” says 22 proudly, and runs a hand over her hood, the sleek lines of the “1” painted on her side. “I get to help do maintenance on it sometimes, and it’s...wow. You should see the weapons matrix in this baby, it’s _insane_. I—” he stops, frowns at Mike Chilton. The way he’s watching. “Wh-what?”

“Oh! Uh, nothin’.” Mike Chilton shrugs, but he’s smiling. Head on one on a tilted to one side a little. “Just, you sound different when you’re talking about cars, I guess.”

“Different?” 22 repeats.

“You didn’t do the…” Mike Chilton waves a hand, then jerks it in the air, _glitch glitch glitch_. “...Like, at all, dude.”

The unit stares at him, running back in his memory base. It’s—he’s, that’s right, it’s right it’s true, he didn’t. He didn’t stutter, he didn’t glitch and stop and he didn’t do it. How did he not, he’s still so broken, how did he make the words? “I, I, I,” he starts, sticks immediately. “I I I I I’m, I really… _Hhh_…”

“Whoa, whoa! Easy, buddy!” Mike Chilton reaches out, pats him carefully on the shoulder. “Hey, I didn’t… Agh, you’re okay, dude.”

He’s young, he’s 22’s age, maybe, and he’s warm and he’s nice, and 22 is starting to think Rayon might have had him called up to the office just then very much _not _by accident.

He raises a twitching hand and rests it over Mike Chilton’s, holding the guy’s hand to his shoulder, pressing into him, and picks up the blink, the twitch of his brows, the faint dilation of his pupils.

“...I’m fine,” says 22, and smiles, and sees Mike Chilton blush. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”


	3. Not Too Not Familiar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you wanna stop?"  
"I don't know," says 22. "No."  
"Me neither," says Mike Chilton, and grins like he's never been afraid in his life. "Live fast--"  
"...Die young?" 22 finishes for him.  
"What?" Mike Chilton snorts. "No! Live free! Y'know, like the saying."  
"Nobody says that."

When Mike comes back from his meeting with Rayon, he looks way more excited than usual. Rayon's not a bad guy or anything, Dutch kind of likes him, but he definitely drives a hard bargain, and negotiating with him is a pain. But Mike bounces out of Mutt like he's delighted with life all of a sudden.

Dutch is helping Julie pump up Nine Lives' tires--well, keeping her company while she does that, really--and they both look up and smile as Mike comes over.

"Hey, cowboy," Julie says. "How's it going?"

"Great!" Mike says, grinning, and looks at Dutch, bouncing on his toes. "I got the new order from Rayon, so, you think you can start in on that?"

"What, right now?" Dutch says, blinking. "Geez, did Rayon get the expedited service package this time or something?"

"Huh? No!" Mike says. "No, I just thought, you know, the sooner it's finished, the sooner I can get back over there!"

Julie squints at him. Dutch blinks.

"What's over there that you're so eager to get back to?" Dutch asks.

"There's this new guy, a new Skylark, and he's really cool!" Mike says, and then keeps going, babbling about this dude.

Dutch eventually raises his eyebrows at Julie, who smirks back, and gets to his feet. Dutch heads over to his workbench and Mike follows along, still talking about this white kid with the speech issues who knows 'like _everything!_' about cars. He finally stops chattering to give Dutch the specifications for the parts he's supposed to make, and then heads back to Julie, and Dutch assumes that's that.

He manages to mostly tune out the ongoing conversation in the background, cutting and shaping and manipulating small pieces and putting them together, but he catches enough to be aware that Mike is still talking about the guy and Julie is just about dying of suppressed amusement. "--Just really smart!" Dutch catches from Mike, and a while later, "--really nice gloves, you know, classy--Jules, do you think I'd look good in gloves? Why are you grinning like that?"

"No reason!" Julie chirps, and Dutch sighs. Julie is clearly not about to help their idiot leader, so it's up to Dutch to put him straight on at least this one detail.

"Man," he says over his shoulder, "don't try to copy his look, that's totally the wrong way to get his attention."

"Oh!" Mike says, and comes bounding over. "Yeah? Bad idea?" he says, making no attempt to deny that he definitely wants this guy's attention.

"Yeah," Dutch says. "Don't, you know, change the way you dress or anything, just--try to look nice, that's all. Comb your hair," he suggests, and Mike immediately puts a hand up to smooth his hair down. Dutch hears Julie muffle a snicker.

"Yeah?" Mike says. "Cool. I can do that! Oh crap," he says, going from confident to alarmed. "I didn't even think--how do I look right now? I mean I just met the guy for the first time, he's gonna remember if I looked like a total mess…"

"You look fine, man," Dutch sighs, torn between annoyance and amusement. On the one hand, this is slowing Dutch's process way the hell down. On the other, he's never seen Mike infatuated before and it's ridiculously cute. Like, this clarifies how the guy can be so smooth around girls: it's not because he's unfairly suave, it's because when he doesn't have a crush, it's easy to stay cool and relaxed. As soon as it's important to him, he's bouncing off the walls.

"...'Fine'. Right, okay," Mike says, face falling a little. "Okay."

Aw man, the big sad eyes are seriously not fair. Dutch snorts and calls over his shoulder, "Julie, tell Mike he looks handsome!"

"Oh, I dunno, Dutch," Julie drawls, "you know how much I hate lying."

Dutch bursts into snickers.

"Hey!" Mike says. "Come on, guys, quit!" He seems to be trying to grin and frown seriously at them both at the same time, and Dutch elbows him, laughing.

"We're just not used to seein' you like this, man," he says. "It's cute, but you can't blame us for takin' the opportunity for a little teasin'."

Mike snorts. "Okay, _fine,_" he says, and grins, going back to bouncing on his toes. "...You're still jerks though. So, how soon you think you can finish the order? I wanna show him some super-cool Burner-style specialty parts, I bet he'll be real impressed!"

Dutch rolls his eyes. "I'll finish it a lot faster with you not jostlin' my elbow the whole time," he says as patiently as he can manage.

"Oh!" Mike says, and his grin turns sheepish. "Right, no problem, buddy. I'll just, uh--" he jerks his thumb at Julie and heads back over to her.

Dutch shakes his head and goes back to work.

\--

Julie's gone back up to Deluxe by the time Texas gets home. Dutch is taking a break from fabricating parts to eat dinner while Mike bounces in and out of the kitchen, alternating scrubbing counters for Jacob with popping random questions to Dutch. Dutch has just finished assuring Mike that _yes_ he thinks this Skylark will like him, Mike's a very likable guy, when Texas bowls into the diner.

"Hey, everybody, the awesome has returned!"

"Hey, Tex!" Mike says.

"Texas, guess what," Dutch says, grinning. "Mike's got a crush on a Skylark!"

Mike grins, too, utterly immune to teasing by virtue of excitement. "He's real new, and he's super cool!"

"Aww, those guys are all boring, though!" Texas protests. "They just like stand around in suits all day!"

"Nah, they're cool," Mike says. "And he's really cool, he's smart and he's cute and he knows a lot about cars--"

"Texas knows a lot about cars!" Texas puts in helpfully, and Dutch snickers.

"You sayin' he ought to be crushin' on you instead of this guy?" Dutch says.

Texas gives Mike a considering look and shrugs. "Maybe. Lotsa people crush on Texas, he's a pretty cool guy. Better than some old dude in a suit."

"He's not old!" Mike says, laughing. "He's our age! He's like the youngest guy in the gang and he's already way high-ranked!"

"You said number 22, right?" Dutch says, and Mike nods.

Texas looks grudgingly interested. "So who is this dude, what's his name?"

Mike's smile slips and Dutch blinks at him. "I don't know," Mike says, and crosses his arms, voice dropping. "_He_ doesn't know."

Holy crap. Dutch isn't actually sure how that'd work, but with that look on Mike's face he's not about to ask.

"Aw, Tiny, he was messin' with you!" Texas says. "Bad luck, dude, they totally say that when they just want you to go away."

Dutch resists the urge to thump his forehead on the diner bar.

Mike kind of half-laughs. "No, buddy, he was serious. There's a lot he doesn't remember, it's not just his name. He's from Deluxe, and… they really messed him up bad. They--he didn't _leave_, like us," he catches Dutch's eye, "they threw him out. I don't know why."

"Dang," Dutch says softly.

"Well, now he's down here," Texas says, "so he's way better off! Who'd wanna live up there anyway, Deluxe is _lame!_ And evil."

"So wait a sec," Dutch says, "if you don't know his name--why haven't they given him a new one? He's a member of the gang, right, that oughta be important!"

Mike frowns. "I dunno. Maybe he doesn't want one? He told me to call him 22, maybe that's good enough."

"Mm. Maybe," Dutch says, disgruntled. Maybe it's part of the same drive that has him painting up and modifying anything he lays hands on, the urge to make it _his_, but if he'd landed down here without a name, he thinks he would've jumped at the chance to pick out a new one for his new life. ...Then again, if he lost his name, but remembered he'd had a family, maybe he'd be more interested in finding some way to dig up that memory, secure that connection to them.

Now is probably not the time to ask if Mike's Skylark had a family, or if he remembers. This conversation got serious way too quick, anyway.

"So," Dutch says, grinning at Mike. "What color are his eyes?"

Mike's cheeks flush faintly as he grins, bashful and pleased. "Blue," he says, and leans forward. "And they _glow_, like for real, they light up and flash sometimes!"

"Uhh," Dutch says, blinking.

"Nuh-_uh!_" Texas says. "Tiny, get real, you're tellin' Texas your new boyfriend has _laser eyes?!_"

"I don't think they're lasers, Tex," Mike laughs. "He's just, you know, really modded up! And he's not my boyfriend yet!"

"I like the 'yet'," Dutch says to Texas.

"Heck yeah!" Texas says, clapping Mike on the shoulder. "Mike's a confident guy! Girls like that." He nods sagely. "So like, dudes too probably."

"I hope so!" Mike says, back to bouncing.

Dutch is going to be interested to meet the guy Mike Chilton's completely gone over. See if he's as fascinating as Mike seems to think, or just another everyday tragedy like the kind you run into all the time down here, with an ordinary guy in the middle of it.

\--

The next time Mike Chilton comes back to the motel, with a big basket of car parts in his arms, he has his whole gang with him.

Rayon had 22 come down to meet him, for _some reason. _(The unit knows, he knows the reason, and it's, it's, it's terrifying, but Mike Chilton _blushed _when 22 touched his hand.) 22 goes down to the entrance five minutes early, and exactly five minutes later there are four brightly-colored cars roaring up to the entrance at terrifying speed, skidding sideways into park.

The unit's eyes track the deceleration, and he flinches but manages not to jump back as Mike Chilton's bright green hotrod rocks still and goes silent, exhaust flares fading and flickering out.

Mike Chilton comes swinging out of the car and hurrying over, comes to a stop in front of the unit and holds out a heavy-looking, clanking basket. The other Burners follow him, looking 22 up and down--22 feels himself shrink a little bit.

"Guys, this is 22," says Mike Chilton, and glances back at the others. "This is Dutch and Julie and Texas!"

"Nh," says 22, and swallows. "N-n-nice to, hh, to meet you."

"He doesn't _look _messed up," says the guy that Mike Chilton called Texas.

"Tex!" Mike Chilton elbows him. "He's not--"

"I am," 22 says, because it's true and, and that's okay, it's _okay. _ "I am. Messed up."

"Well, you're pretty dang cool, either way," Mike Chilton says firmly. "Here!" He holds out the basket again, and after a moment the unit cautiously takes it. "This is Rayon's latest order, I thought you might like to, y'know, check it out, see the parts we made! Dutch designs and makes 'em, he's real good."

The really tall guy gives a little wave. 22 looks from him to Mike Chilton to the basket, uncertain. The parts are for Mr. Rayon, the unit should take them to him, shouldn't dawdle, shouldn't--but it's Mike Chilton, Mr. Rayon seemed to think 22 should, should spend time with, _about time you met someone your own age_\--and a bunch of specialty parts, which are so interesting, must take so much skill to make.

The unit's memory pulls up a sudden, inane image of person holding out a bouquet of flowers, transposes it on Mike Chilton holding out the basket of parts. Then he blinks, and that thought is gone.

"I can tell you about them," Mike Chilton says, warm, smiling. "If you want."

"I," says 22, and swallows, takes a step closer. "I do. Want."

\--

Nothing happens on that visit, but Mike's pretty sure it went _awesome. _For one thing, he talked about cars the whole time and 22 actually talked back, not like somebody who's just putting up with it but like he knew what he was talking about and he _wanted _to talk about cars. And also he just kept...touching? And moving, in...ways, and _looking _at Mike. Mike's one of the blunter knives in the drawer sometimes, but he's not stupid. 22 was finding excuses to touch him, on the shoulder and hand and once, kind of heart-stoppingly, brushing a hand past Mike's hip as he walked past.

"Yeah," says Dutch thoughtfully, when they get back to the hideout. "Yeah, okay. Dude's definitely pickin' up what you're puttin' down."

"Yeah?" Mike can't stand still, can't stop replaying the way 22 said--well, just, _everything _he said. The stutter is kind of sad, mostly because Mike gets the impression it's a side effect of something, a kind of verbal scar. But god, Mike is really into this guy. "You think you can--?"

"I'll go start on Rayon's order," Dutch sighs, and shoots Mike a grin. "You better be glad you got me as a wingman, Chilton, I'm gonna make this white boy the prettiest engine block he's ever seen, just for you."

"You're the best, Dutch," says Mike fervently, and forces himself to go bug somebody else while Dutch settles in to work.

He goes back by himself the third time, and 22 is waiting for him again by the gate. Mike comes in kinda hot, skids, and 22 takes a single cool step back and to the side and ends up a few inches from Mutt's driver-side door.

"Hey!" says Mike, and swings out. When he stands up he realizes abruptly that 22 didn't step back, so now he's a couple inches from the guy's face, staring up into those flickery blue eyes. Mike takes a step back, feels his back touch the side of the car and does his best to smile disarmingly. "Hey," he says again, a little more breathlessly. "I'm, uh...I'm back."

"You're back," says 22, and...god, when he doesn't stutter, when his voice manages to be steady and even for two seconds, he even _sounds_ like Chuck. Mike swallows, smiles. Holds out the basket of parts. 22 takes them, and still doesn't step back.

"So, uh," says Mike.

"We need to talk," says 22.

\--

22 puts the basket neatly in some kind of inbox in a back room off the motel lounge, and then gives Mike a meaningful look and heads quickly off into a back hallway Mike's never been down before. Mike follows, kind of worried and kind of excited--he's going somewhere alone with the guy, that's either really good or like...really bad.

They get to some apparently random point in the hallway, and 22 stops dead and turns back to him, fixing him with a really intense look.

"What's up, dude?" says Mike, hopefully in a friendly, casual, non-nervous way.

22 stares at him for another second and then, instead of answering, he steps forward and puts a hand on Mike's face.

Oh, geez, okay. So this is the _really good _kind of "we need to talk". Mike leans into that cool, careful touch, starting forward--and then stumbles a little as the hand pulls away again. 22 is still staring at him, brows furrowed.

"...You want me," he says.

It's not a question, not shy--it's a statement of fact. Mike opens his mouth on a knee-jerk denial, then chokes that off because wow, no. Yes.

"Yeah," he says, just as plainly, because why the heck would he _not_. "I do, man. I mean, I like you. Seemed like you liked me too, maybe."

22 is blinking at him, kinda confused, kinda interested. "…I do," he says. "I--I do like. You."

Mike's heart shoots up into his throat. "You do?"

"You're." 22 ducks his head for a second, eyes flickering. "…You're… cute?"

He doesn't sound sure, and it's not the _best _adjective ever to hear from your cool suit-wearing cyborg crush, but it's pretty dang good. Mike draws himself up, grinning. "You're cute too!" he says. "You're really cute, dude!"

"Oh," says 22, looking vaguely startled. "I'm, I am?"

"Uh, yeah?!" Mike says, incredulous. "Dude, you're--really cute. And smart! And really nice. I like your eyes."

He shuts his mouth abruptly, suddenly aware that he's kind of just babbling now, just kind of spilling out all the things he's said to the other Burners as fast as he can think of them. 22 looks a little startled, but not actually upset or embarrassed. Mostly just kind of confused.

"Huh," he says, and wrinkles up his nose, which is...really cute too, wow. "...Okay. I have to...go, and do something. Will you, can, uh, wait here?"

"Yeah, totally!" says Mike.

"It might take, a second," says 22, with an effort. "A minute, a couple, a few minutes. Can you…?"

"I'll wait as long as you need me to, dude," says Mike, and means every word. "I'll be right here."

22 smiles at him and turns away, hurrying off down the hall toward the elevators and stepping onto one. Mike settles back against the wall, grinning after him, buzzing with adrenaline and glee.

"Texas," he says, and Texas picks up almost immediately. "Texas! Dude, 22 said I was cute!"

"Aw dang!" says Texas, suitably impressed. "You flex for him? I'm tellin' you, people dig it when you flex."

"Nah," says Mike, laughing, and glances back toward the elevators. He'll wait, he totally will, but he's already getting jittery. "So uh...I dunno when I'll be back though, it might be...later."

"Whoa-ho-_ho_," says Texas, and his little cube avatar zooms around Mike's head. "Yeah, _nice, _Texas'll tell everybody."

"You don't have to--"

"_Everybody,_" Texas repeats gleefully. "Get some! Ka-chaw!"

His avatar blinks out again. Mike rolls his eyes fondly at the place where it was, then straightens up abruptly as the elevator dings softly down the hall. He straightens his jacket, grinning, and then slumps a little.

It's a big Skylark carrying a box under one arm, and the elevator behind him is empty. Mike steps to one side, letting him through, but when the guy catches sight of him he heads straight in Mike's direction, drawing himself up to his full height.

"Chilton," he says.

"Uh…" Mike can't see the number on the back of his suit, and he doesn't know the guy--he steps back, and the guy follows, backing him up against the wall. "Hi, uh… dude? What can I do for--?"

"You been makin' eyes at our 22," says the guy.

"Oh!" says Mike. "Yeah? I guess?"

"Our boy's been through a lot, see?" says the guy, and jabs a finger into Mike's chest. "Doesn't need no more _trouble._ See?"

"I'm not!" Mike protests. "I'm not trouble, seriously! I just--uh. I like him, he's cool! I'm not gonna--hurt him, or anything."

"Yeah, you _better _not." The Skylark pulls his glasses down with one finger, narrowing his eyes at Mike over the top of them. "You better not, Chilton, or you're gonna wish you never heard of the Skylark Motel." He jabs Mike in the chest one more time, pushes himself back and swaggers off down the hallway.

Mike watches him go, baffled, and then shakes his head and settles back against the wall, waiting.

Three or four other Skylarks come through while Mike is waiting, and all of them say pretty much the same thing. 22 has had it hard, their Bright-eyes has been through some stuff, the kid's still healing. He's a good kid, a good man, he's a good Skylark. Mike better treat him right, better not hurt him, better watch himself. Mike nods and promises and nods some more, because heck, he wasn't gonna hurt the guy anyway, but he'll totally be extra careful. For sure. Yeah, of course, totally, he'll be careful.

22 comes back down about ten minutes after he left, looking just about the same as he did, but considerably less antsy.

"Okay," is the first thing he says. "I, I, I like you, we're, mutually, we're mutually cute, to each other. So." He gives Mike an uncertain, almost challenging look.

"Sounds good to me?" Mike says, and 22 nods and moves on.

"--I don't know wh-wh-wh-wh-what--" he stops, hisses through his teeth and tries again. "I don't know how to make you feel good, you're new data."

Oh. Wow, okay, uh...cool, this is totally a conversation Mike was ready for. Wow.

"I'm not picky, dude," Mike says cautiously, and 22 nods, serious and focused, like he thinks he should be taking notes. "I just like you, I want you to feel good. And…" maybe he shouldn't, but...it kinda feels important, like he should. "I know some bad stuff happened to you, so…"

22 winces, just a little. "I know what I want," he says, low and fierce and not stuttering at all, and it takes Mike's breath, just a little, the intensity of those words.

"I know," Mike says, and clears his throat. "I, I know you do, I get that, just, uh...I want this to be okay, for you, okay? So whatever you're into, dude, whatever you wanna do to me, I'm cool with--"

22 moves so fast Mike's eyes can't keep up--a sudden blurred streak of neon blue cuts through the air from his glowing eyes, and then he's got both of Mike's wrists pinned to the wall. He didn't look all that tall just standing there but all of a sudden he _looms, _tall and broad-shouldered, eyes glowing like beacons in the shadows of his face.

"Whatever I want?" he repeats, and his weight cages Mike against the wall, his hands squeeze. Mike can't breathe, pinned there, heart suddenly thrumming. It's like he just touched a live wire, every nerve lit up.

"_Yeah,_" he says, breathless. "Yeah, wow, yeah."

The Skylark goes still, staring like Mike's some weird animal he's never seen before.

"That's okay," Mike says again, in case the guy didn't get the message. "That's--more than okay, dude, wow. That's--_wow._"

"I could. Damage you," says 22, halting and soft. "How is, is, how is that _okay_?"

Mike shrugs as well as he can, hands still pinned beside his head, heart racing. "I, uh… I always kinda liked it," he admits, and twitches his hips just barely up against one of 22's lean thighs. "Kinda, uh. I like,_ha, _a little bit of danger, dude, I'm not scared of _'damage'_."

"Y-you like it," says 22, and his eyes flicker. "You want want want still want more?"

"Heck yeah!" says Mike fervently, and then yelps in shock as he's tugged abruptly around and shoved hard against the wall. Something silky-smooth and soft wraps around his wrists, pinning them behind his back. When Mike is pulled back around his hands are tied and 22's tie is gone and--oh. _Oh._

"I'm, not right," 22 tells him, unexpectedly soft, and presses a hand against Mike's chest, steady and solid. His eyes are flickering and flashing, but he looks almost…scared. "I'm, malfunctional. Misfunction--_fuck._" He reaches up, scrubs at his face with one hand and then reaches down, hesitates, pulls his gloves off. "I'm broken," he says plainly, and rolls up the sleeve, does something to the cufflink that makes a hologram flicker and dissipate. Mike knew he was missing a finger--somebody tailored his gloves for it. But he's never seen the twisted, jagged scars around the missing pinky, the glints of metal where the skin's been stripped away from 22's ring finger and half of his palm. There are nasty gashes on both forearms, with bare silver muscle shifting underneath.

22 holds the hand up between them, flexing the mutilated fingers, watching Mike's face like he's waiting for a flinch or a disgusted sneer.

"I don't work how I'm supposed to," he says. "Sometimes. I learned… e-e-everything, _hh_, I learned everything all wrong."

"Well…" Mike wets his lips, hesitates. It feels like this is…important, like this is a moment he can't afford to screw up. "Maybe… we can figure out what's right together, then."

22 holds his eyes for a long second, blank-faced, wide-eyed. Then, finally, he sighs. The hand pressing on Mike's chest eases up, the fierce intensity in his eyes softens.

"I shouldn't have--" he edges forward, reaches back like he's going to undo the tie around Mike's wrists. "I got, I just got, um."

"What?" Mike twists, pulling his hands away, more than a little bit disappointed. "Come on, dude, don't say that! It was cool! It's… really cool. I kinda like it, I think."

"But," says 22. "But you should, you _think?_ You think, you don't know."

"I mean, I've never let somebody I liked tie me up before," Mike says earnestly, and then blinks at the look on 22's face. "Is… is that weird?"

"I'm, I, I mean," 22 groans and makes another grab for Mike's tied wrists--Mike, mostly out of stubbornness at this point, dodges away again. "Don't ask _me, _I learned _wrong, _I learned, really _shitty _stuff, what if I--do something bad to you, and you, you, you don't know…"

"I'll tell you if I don't like something!" Mike says hopefully, and the cyborg growls, frustrated, and shoves forward to pin him to the wall again. "Hff--_ah, _dude. Wow."

\--

The unit can't make sense of Mike Chilton.

He doesn't _make sense. _He's, he, he has no respect for, he has no, he doesn't _care _if he gets damaged? His body is showing signs of adrenaline of _fear, _pupils huge and breath fast and heart racing, humming tension. But he leans into it, he's hard and, and hips rolling against 22's leg like he wants it now, wants it so bad.

22 pushes back against him, to see, to find out what would happen. And what happens is Mike Chilton is, is he cries out low and rough and not ashamed, twists and moans like 22 was doing something good, something amazing. 22 puts a hand on his chest and presses down on the hard muscle, pins him, and that's good too, it seems like, because Mike Chilton groans again and pushes up into it.

"You like that?" says the unit. It's a pointless question, the answer is clear but, but hearing him, but hearing the moan and the _yeah, buddy, yeah wow_, it's… good. Feels good. Feels good to hear, like he's doing good. "You're. You can't. Fight. I could do things, t-to you."

"_Mmm_," says Mike Chilton, like he doesn't even know why he should be afraid of that. "Ha, yeah, jeez, you totally could, dude, you _totally _should."

"You don't make any _sense,_" says 22, frustrated.

"Is that bad?"

"I don't know," says 22.

"Do you… do you wanna stop?"

"I don't know," says 22. "No."

"Me neither," says Mike Chilton, and grins like he's never been afraid in his life. "Live fast--"

"...Die young?" 22 finishes for him.

"What?" Mike Chilton snorts. "No! Live free! Y'know, like the saying."

"Nobody says that."

"People say it!"

"_You _say it." The unit rests a hand on Mike Chilton's throat, presses just a tiny bit. Feels him shudder under it. "That's not a real thing, Chilton."

"Mike," says Mike Chilton.

"Mike Chilton."

"Just Mike, dude!" Mike--_Mike _laughs. "It feels like I'm in trouble if you call me _Chilton _like that."

"You _are _in trouble," 22 points out. "I can damage you. You won't stop me from damaging you. You're definitely in in t-trouble."

"Nah," says Mike. "You're not gonna hurt me more than I can handle."

He doesn't _know _that. "I could," 22 says, and swallows, words burning his throat, pushing out so fast they tumble over each other. "I know how, I know how to p-p-push, how hard to push, I could push--too hard. And you're c-cuffed up, you _hh_\-- You'd have to. You'd. Have to handle it. Even if it hurt if it was it was it was too much, and, and you hated it."

Mike starts to laugh again, starts to shrug that off--then he pauses. Cocks his head on one side. His eyes are suddenly focused, dark and sharp and serious on 22's face, all that sunny carelessness burned away.

"...Is that what happened to you?" he says, soft and hurt-pitying-intense.

The unit pulls his hand away like the places they touch burn. Swallows hard, breathes through his nose, tries to keep his breathing steady, fails. "I," he says. "That, I, I, I--"

"Oh--_shoot, _hey, no." Mike leans forward, pulls at the tie on his wrists, watching with big, wide, worried eyes. The sharpness has gone soft again, his voice is worried, gentle. "I'm sorry, man, that was--not cool of me, shoot. It's none of my business, I shouldn't have asked. Look, you can untie me if you want, I didn't mean to mess you up or anything. I just--I'm sorry, dude, it's just--_bullcrap_, that, uh...that somebody hurt you like that. Sorry."

22 breathes. Keeps breathing, doesn't let his chest and throat close up, maintains oxygen levels. Lets the hurt die a little bit before he answers.

"That..._wasn't_. Cool of you, no," he says, with an effort, and Mike winces, face going all twisted up, regretting it. "And--it's definitely bullcrap. But. It's okay, it's all...good. I'm, I'm getting better." He's pretty sure people who are okay and good don't tie people up and push them against walls, though. But Mike says he likes it? He doesn't look like he's lying. "You don't want me to untie you?"

"No?" says Mike.

"You don't sound sure," 22 points out, a little accusingly. Mike huffs at him and rolls his shoulders.

"Take me somewhere private and I'll show you how sure I am," he says, like it's a challenge, and the unit, and he, and 22 wants that. He likes that, the way Mike's eyes are dark and they burn and they want.

"Okay," he says, and hooks the collar of Mike's shirt with a finger, pulling him along. After a second he doesn't have to pull, because Mike is rushing along with him, eyes on 22's throat, on his mouth, on his hands, and 22 has felt..._wanted, _a lot, often, but never quite like this. "Show, sh--show me."

They have to take the elevator up to the top floor where the unit's designated--where his, his room is, and while they're in the elevator 22 reaches out and pulls up a little on the hem of Mike's shirt, kind of peeking in under it, gets a good look at olive-brown skin and muscle that shivers to his touch. Leaves it pushed up, because he looks good, just because of that, and because he can. It's like, it's like, it feels like, a _drug, _it feels like getting drunk through his eyes. Seeing Mike's dark eyes and flushed lips and the slice of bare skin on his belly. Mike lets him do that, bare his skin and leave him that way, and 22 wants to know what else Mike would let him do. _Whatever you're into, whatever you want to do to me._

"Is this your room?" says Mike, when 22 pulls him inside, and 22 nods, is still, nods again. Mike looks around, grins, heads over to the window and looks out over the rest of the motel, the neon. His hands are still tied behind his back, fabric wrinkled and pulled tight on his shoulders so it shows how the muscles work. The unit wants to _bite _him. The unit wants things that don't make sense.

Mike goes still when 22 steps up behind him and puts his hands on Mike's stomach, fitting his thumbs up into the shape of Mike's hip bones, pushing his shirt up a little bit more. He's, he's good, to look at, he's handsome and physically, he's just really nice to touch. And taking his clothes off, making him...visible, claimed, naked because 22 wants him to be, it feels new and familiar and--

_Oh baby, getting you naked's like unwrapping a _ present…

The unit pulls his hands away. "If I take the tie off," he says, testing, "y-you're gonna leave your hands where they are."

"If you want me to," agrees Mike easily, and licks his lips as he turns back to face 22, cocks his head on one side. "Why. You want my shirt off?"

He does, in fact, want Mike's shirt off.

"Take it off, and then--_hh._ Put, put your hands back again," says 22, and Mike waits patiently as his hands are untied. Strips his shirt off in one smooth motion, baring more tan muscle. Crosses his wrists behind his back and gives 22 a look like he's challenging 22 to a fight, grin all sharp all hot all wild at the edges.

"You should take yours off too," he says hopefully.

"...What if I don't w… want to?" asks 22, testing, and Mike blinks and then shrugs.

"Up to you, dude! I'm just sayin', that would be… cool." His eyes flicker up and down 22's body, his eyelids lower a little. Eyes all dark and gaze soft. "...That would be really cool."

"Maybe later," says the unit, and it's a test, but Mike just goes "Okay, dude, sure," and smiles at him. Like he's, like this, like it's okay, he's okay to wait, even though he thinks 22 is...cute.

The Duke called him cute once or twice, but he never said it like Mike does. He said it while he did things that were, that he didn't--that weren't okay, and the unit didn't know it then but they weren't okay and he knows it, now. The Duke thought it was cute how he cried. The Duke thought it was cute when he begged.

Mike thinks he's cute, that he's nice, and smart, and good. He said so, and he smiled, and he looks rueful but not upset when 22 doesn't want to get naked with him. Just smiles at him. Does what 22 asks, tells, orders him to do.

"Bed," says 22, dumbly, and then coughs, gets it together. "We should, on the bed. It's where you're supposed to, to, to, stuff like this, to do stuff like this." God, he was getting so good at talking and as soon as he gets a little bit stressed it all falls apart again, fuck.

He knows what he's doing here, sort of, not really. When Mike crawls onto the bed, the unit follows him and kisses him, strokes his face and his neck carefully. Touching sensitive areas feels good, applying gentle stimulation, not too much. Building intimacy, he knows this stuff. The Duke never bothered with it, but there are books, in some of the private libraries in the back of the motel. Rayon didn't tell 22 about them, probably doesn't know he knows, but that's...fine, honestly, that's good. He'd probably want to put rules on which ones of the, the books the porn the _reference volumes _22 could check out, and that would be. Limiting. 22 is taking _initiative._

Mike makes eager noises into his mouth as they kiss. He presses closer until 22 can't breathe, until he has to grab at Mike on a spike of panic and get a handful of thick, brown hair. Mike groans and then gasps as 22 pulls, pulls harder, watches Mike's throat work and hears him make a soft, high noise. When he pulls until Mike's back arches, Mike gasps _oh, dude, please_, and arches his neck, baring the whole stretch of skin. The unit applies pressure, suction, biting and sucking methodically, testing reactions--Mike makes eager loud sounds.

"Can I touch you?" he says, and his voice cracks as the unit applies friction to both nipples, rolls them between his fingers and rubs them. "I hn_nh_, I, I want to, I'd like, _please, _dude?"

"Wait," says 22, and Mike groans and shivers and groans and _waits. _Waits as 22 undoes his jeans slowly, slides his zip down a little at a time, dares to trace the lines of his, of his, of him, his dick, through his underwear. Mike groans out eager things to the room, to the dark, to 22, pleas and praise, _oh buddy that feels so, so good, please, come on..._ He still has his hands behind his back, and he's being good. He passed multiple, he did, he did what he was supposed to do, and he deserves, probably, a reward.

22 hooks Mike's beltloops, pulls a little--Mike lifts his hips up without any more prompting, eagerly helping to get his jeans off. And then he's naked, edging his knees apart hopefully like he's waiting like he wants, he wants, he wants to be touched. Thin, sensitive skin on the insides of his thighs, and it looks so dark against 22's pale hands, against his red knuckles, the silver stripped-bare alloy of the unit's fingers.

"Come on, come on, come on," Mike is mumbling, almost chanting it, in time with the restless shift and settle of his hips. "Please, yes, come on..."

22 rubs his thumbs back and forth, leans down and breathes and Mike goes "Ah!" goes "_Whoa_", goes "Wh-what--" and then 22 goes down on his dick in one smooth, practiced swallow and Mike goes "Ah_hhah--!"_ and jerks up against him and comes.

It's so unexpected the unit chokes for the first time he can remember. Pulls back, coughing, and Mike is apologizing but his voice keeps catching and hitching on the words because he's still all blown apart all loose all shaky and amazed. Done, finished, he wasn't supposed to yet, that's _wrong. _He's supposed to--he's not--

"Sorry!" says the unit, frantic with shock--what did he do, what was wrong, what happened? It's over and it's too fast, he didn't even get to make him feel good, what _happened?_ ( _Make it last, bot, you got no reason to be in a hurry..._) "I'm, I'm sorry, I didn't, I don't know what, I-I-I-I'm sorry, I didn't mean--"

"_Wow,_" says Mike, and pushes himself up, and he's _smiling, _grinning and panting and glowing with exertion and glee. "Whoa, dude, don't be sorry-- That was crazy!"

"Uh, I," says 22.

"That doesn't mean it's over or anything, right?" says Mike, and glances down 22's body to his at his, down to the fly of his pants, and licks his lips. "I haven't got a lot of practice or anything, but I'd love to return the favor, bro."

"Hha," says 22. "Uh."

\--

Rayon is sitting in his office, enjoying a glass of finest bootleg alcohol and a vintage free-rock album, when his comm goes off. He's about to dismiss the call--if it's something urgent they'll sound an alarm, it can wait--except then he sees the caller ID.

Rayon raises his eyebrows to himself, straightens his jacket, puts down his glass and picks up the call.

"--Who you're calling, that's all," says Mike Chilton, and then blinks at the screen. He's red in the face and rumpled-looking; his lips look thoroughly kissed and his hair is sticking up at odd angles. Also, he's not wearing a shirt. "Oh! Hey, Rayon!"

"Sir!" 22 appears in the foreground, not quite as flushed or ruffled but very anxious, eyes big and blue and round. He's clutching his tie to his chest, wound nervously around his hands, and he's red all the way to the tips of his ears. Rayon resists the urge to sigh, reaches over and turns off his music.

"Nice look, Mike," he says, equal parts amused and long-suffering, and is obscurely pleased to see cocky, dashing Mike Chilton laugh self-consciously and reach up to mess with his rumpled hair. "You kids havin' fun down there?"

"_Yeah,_" says Mike fervently, and "--No!" squawks 22 at almost the same time. Then, as Rayon starts to sit up, smile falling, "--I mean, yes, yeah, b-b-but, I did it wrong, I didn't, I did some some some something wrong, and--"

"What?" says Mike. "Is that why you're calling him? Dude, you didn't do anything wrong, that was great!"

"It's supposed to, it's not, it's not not not not not--" 22 groans, thumps a fist against the side of his head. "It's not supposed to--go like that! Fast like that!"

Oh, _lord. _Rayon sits back, pushes his glasses up just a little and pinches the bridge of his nose as Mike sputters. "It does _sometimes,_" Rayon says, with all the patience he can muster. "You're just that good, 22, that ever occur to you?"

"But, but, but, but--" 22 sticks on the word, waves his hands, bursts out, "--But he's not _supposed _to! I'm not supposed to!"

"Hey," Mike interjects, vaguely embarrassed but mostly just concerned. "It was good, dude, I liked it! It would've been cool if it, uh, lasted longer, but that's on me, not you."

"No!" 22 says. "No, it's not! I'm the, your, I'm, I was the one who, I was--"

Well, there's a time for being subtle and a time for going straight to the point. "It's not on you that he's a virgin, 22," Rayon says firmly, and _that _makes Mike go pretty much beet red. "You know some tricks he'd have trouble handlin' even if this _wasn't _his first time."

"Hey!"

"Are you tellin' me I'm wrong?" Rayon says, and Mike opens his mouth, closes it again. Huffs, eyes darting over to 22 and back. "Nothin' wrong with that either, all I'm sayin' is, it was always gonna be fast the first time. That's _normal._"

"You're, you, y-you, uh." 22 blinks at Mike, looking totally poleaxed. Internally, Rayon winces a little. It didn't even occur to the kid, did it? Shit. He's probably forgotten there are people out there who aren't drowning in this stuff, who've never even thought of half the stuff he's done and… had done to him. "You're not, you've, you've never...?"

"I have _now,_" Mike says, and Rayon will give him this, he's resolutely forthright about the whole thing. There's a line between embarrassment and shame, but Mike's not crossing it. Good for him. "And it was great! So."

"You've never..." 22 glances over and down, and Mike follows his gaze and kind of shuffles his knees up, cheeks darkening a little further. "But you're, you're, you're, you're my age, you're, how old are you?"

"Nineteen," says Mike. "So? Is that--really that bad?"

"No!" says 22 urgently. "No, it's not, i-i-it's fine, it's great, I'm just...sssssorry. I didn't mean to--I didn't know--"

Now Mike looks hurt--and it's easy to tell, too, the kid wears his heart on his sleeve--and 22 looks kind of pitying and panicked and embarrassed all at once, and Rayon just wanted to relax with his music, he didn't need this tonight. "Okay, okay," he says. "Bright-eyes, you gotta settle down. Take it easy, tell him what you're hung up on."

22 blinks at him, then at Mike, and for the first time he seems to see the spooked, unhappy look on Mike's face. He wilts a little bit.

"...I'm. Not," he starts, slow and uneven, trying to make the words line up right. "I'm not a good. Person to do this with. For the first, the first first, the first--_rrgh, _the first _time. _I told you I'm. Broken, about, a-a-about this. I didn't mean. To take--"

God, Rayon needs another drink. "_I'm broken",_ christ. He's gonna have to have another talk with 22 at some point.

"What?" says Mike, and now the sad look is gone and he just looks confused, hopeful. "No! I wouldn't've gone for it if I didn't like you, dude. I mean, I don't care what kind of stuff you've--" and then, maybe on some instinct, maybe seeing the minute tensing of Rayon's shoulders, rethinking whatever he was about to say, "--That was great, okay? And it'd be totally great if we could… y'know, do it… a couple more times."

He smiles, reaches up to mess with his hair for a second, and Rayon has to admit those are some pretty compelling bedroom eyes he's got going for him. So, Mike Chilton can swing _cute and charming, _huh? From a guy who once showed up to a business meeting in a tanktop a size too small and covered in grease and motor-oil, it's kind of a pleasant surprise. "Is that cool?"

22 gives him an aggrieved, wide-eyed look and then stares at Rayon and gestures to Mike like _have you seen this?_ Rayon has to smile, although he curbs the impulse to laugh. A man's gotta maintain an image, after all.

"What do you need from me?" he says plainly. "I was workin' on something up here--you need, what, condoms, lube, toys? You can phone room service, that's not my department."

"Toys?" says Mike, looking confused but _really _curious, and Rayon has to fight the urge to drop his face into his hands. "What kind of toys?"

"22, can you handle educatin' your man, there?" he says, instead of any of the other options he suddenly has at Chilton's expense. "I can send one of the boys up there if you don't want to handle it. With _condoms._" He gives them both a real sharp look over the top of his glasses, and 22 licks his lips and looks abashed, which tells Rayon about all he needs to know as far as what he did to Mike a minute ago that's got him so worked up.

"Condoms for _what?_" says Mike.

"I figured you'd be the type to go the extra mile," says Rayon, and sits back at his desk, picking up his glass again. "I mean it's not like you have to, some folks don't, but I figured you'd want to try everything once."

Mike blinks at him. 22 glances at him, back to Rayon, visibly swallows. Rayon cocks his head a little, and 22 glances back at Mike and… considers, this time. Looks him over. The flush in his cheeks, which was starting to die out, comes creeping back.

"I mean, totally," Mike is saying, oblivious to the way 22 is sizing up him and his dick like a goddamn connoisseur. "Trying new stuff is the best! I just dunno what 'extra mile' you're--"

"Sex," says 22 unexpectedly, startlingly blunt. "He's t-t-talking, talking about sex."

"But we just did," says Mike, frowning. "I mean, there's not… a lot of other stuff, unless you're gender-reassigned, but--"

22 shakes his head, glances pointedly down at the tightness of his fly and back up. Mike makes a little _well, couldn't be sure _kind of gesture.

"What do you want, kid, a how-to guide?" says Rayon, long-suffering, and… wait, actually, that's not a bad idea. "I'm sending you a how-to guide."

"What?" says Mike, and then he looks down at the screen and goes absolutely scarlet as the video Rayon sent him starts to play. "Whoa! Dude, what the heck?!" He scrambles to find the off button, fumbling as the sounds of two men getting very intimately acquainted with each other filters back roughly through 22's comm. 22 cranes his neck a little, watching the porn with vague interest, then looks back at Rayon.

"...I did, d-did good," he says hopefully. "I told him what I wanted a-a-a-and we did it."

Well shit, that is pretty good. "Nice job," says Rayon, as Mike finally manages to find the pause button. "I know Mike's gonna be a gentleman about all this, but don't hesitate to put him in his place if he gets… forward. You don't owe anybody anything…"

"...Except the respect they've earned," 22 finishes. "Yessir. Thhh--th-thank you."

"What the heck?!" Mike says again, reappearing in the call. He's bright red and round-eyed, awkward in a way Rayon's never gotten to see him before. It's much funnier than his usual bravado. "Rayon! Dude, that's, that's a public decency violation, you can't just--where did you get that?!"

"People are always gonna make porn, kid," says Rayon, and cocks an eyebrow. "...We do a lotta things down here that are… _public decency violations._ I'd imagine they did up there, too, even if you didn't hear about it."

"I--" Mike starts, and then stops, mouth moving silently for a second. Then, slowly, his shocked expression settles into something kind of..tired. Resigned, almost. "Oh," he says. "...Right. Yeah, I… okay." He marshals a little, shakes his head. "--But--wait, people _do _that? I mean, even if you're allowed--_why_?"

Rayon sighs, rubbing one temple with a knuckle. "...I'm not havin' this conversation with you right now, Mike. Trust me, open up your mind a little bit and 22 can show you 'why'. But it's none of my business." He directs a firm look at each of them. "You talk that over. I'm sendin' a gift basket your way, _don't _start anything until you've got supplies. And 22--take off your jacket, you're gonna crease it."

"Yessir," says 22, who looks chagrined. He's probably going to apologize for calling later, although in this case Rayon's intervention was apparently actually needed. The kid's education was real big on "_read your partner's mind, make it look effortless, be a perfect, noisy little sexbot and make sure when you suffer you put on a nice show_" and not so big on "_consent is important, sex should be safe_". He could always use a reminder.

"Message me with questions," Rayon says, resigned. _"Message,_ not call. Have fun, boys."

\--

Mike likes the new things 22 shows him. Mike likes them a lot, enough that he begs and moans and begs and, and makes 141 knock politely on the door and ask if they're okay in there. Enough 22 gets out of bed, gets up and leaves Mike tied to the, gets up and Mike is tied to the headboard, 22 has to go and turn on the sound-canceller.

He does new things, and Mike likes it a _lot._ Even when sometimes--sometimes he's embarrassed, and the unit doesn't like that. He remembers feeling, blushing, not wanting to bend over something, being overridden, doing it anyway--he doesn't like seeing Mike embarrassed like that, ashamed. He doesn't like that, he's not _like _that. He's not like the Duke.

Mike likes it when 22 fingers him though, and he likes vibrators, a lot, when 22 shows him what "toys" means. He likes it when 22 blows him, taking it slower this time, much more, more... Good, satisfactory. He's satisfactory, takes Mike there slowly and then when Mike's asking, when he's, he begs so easily, so much, so eagerly, even when the unit barely does anything, when he's not trying to. 22 makes him _scream, _he feels so good.

It's good he comes so quickly, he doesn't want to wait, he's eager and moves fast and begs for the slightest little reason. The Duke always dragged it out and then stopped after one, smoked and then went to bed and left, and left, and left and _left _the unit, left him shaking and wanting it and crying wherever he was left. But Mike wants to go over and over again, if he wanted to go that slowly it would be really bad--he rides the unit's fingers and shakes for his hands and begs for his mouth and it's only after the third time he falls back on the bed, sweaty and panting, and grinning, grinning so, so wide.

"_Wow, _buddy," he says.

"Yes," says 22, and then thinks and realizes he should say more. "Thank you." No, but, he doesn't owe his services, Mike got to feel good because the unit did something for him. The Skylarks have been really clear about that, have made that, have laid the rules out. "...You're welcome."

"Yeah, thanks!" says Mike, and rolls over on the bed, stretches. Muscles shifting and moving, and the, and the, and the roll of his spine. Muscle in his thighs, his ass, his shoulders, the unit wants to taste his hipbones and do, do unauthorized, do things he wasn't taught how to do. Put his mouth _everywhere._

22 watches, and keeps on watching Mike turn on his back again, licks his lips and tastes Mike's, tastes what he tasted like, when he came.

"...You need a hand, dude?" says Mike.

"What?" says 22, and looks down, looking at where Mike is looking. He's hard, it feels good, his body wants--but he doesn't think about that, he can't, it hurts too much when you want want want to feel, to feel good. "Help, uh, help with...?"

"I still wanna return the favor," says Mike, and scoots forward on the bed. "You can tell me what to do, uh...if you want. I dunno how good I'd be, but you...you really deserve it, dude. And you've been waiting a while, right?"

He's so _earnest, _he means it, 22 can see him meaning it. Mike wants him, wants to make him feel good, wants to make him come. The unit opens his mouth, makes a noise, an unauthorized--a noise he didn't mean to make, and closes his mouth again, face going hot. Mike sits up a little, smile falling. "...Is that okay?" he says.

"I," says the unit, and is horrified to realize that for some stupid reason that's making his body _cry_. He can feel his eyes burning and his chest tight. "I just, nobody wants, I don't know. I don't know. I don't don't don't don't know what's wrong, I..."

"Aw, buddy," says Mike, and pushes himself up, gets up on his knees and crawls over. "You good? I can stop, if--"

"No!" says 22, too loud, panic shooting up through him like a, like, like an error. "No, don't, please, I do want, please let me--"

"Shoot, dude," says Mike quietly, and reaches out, grabs his knees. The unit starts to move back, ready to be pushed over, ready for strong hands pulling his legs apart--Mike just holds on, squeezes. "I'm not gonna leave you hanging or anything," he says. "I just don't wanna freak you out, bro."

"I'm not freaking out," says 22, which is a blatant lie, because he's crying and unauthorized and crying all over the place, like a loser. He doesn't know why he was built with these functions, he _hates _them, he was going to be _cool, _dammit. "Nobody. Wanted. Nobody wants. To do that, with, with, with, for me, I must've, not, the Duke didn't because he--_sucks _and the guys don't and Mr. Rayon doesn't want to because I'm...I dunno, dude, it's stupid, I'm fine, I'm f-f-f-freaking out, I'm _not _freaking out, I'm _fine_!"

"Rayon?" says Mike, and then "The _Duke?_" and then, maybe he sees how both of those names make the unit feel a sudden, a distinct spike in distress, because he goes "Hey, look, dude, I don't know what's goin' on there but you should totally get to, uh. I'll help, for sure, I just might need you to help me out a little."

For a minute 22 doesn't get what he's talking about--then he remembers. Mike, yes. Doesn't--no experience. Needs, needs, needs...education? Needs help.

Mike's hands are rough on the palms when he slides them up, across, up the insides of 22's, both thighs. Callus on his fingers and scars on his knuckles. He's careful though. Touches really soft.

"Lube," says 22, with an effort. He can feel himself twitching, shivering, eager. He can touch himself, he knows, he does, sometimes, but this is better. This is something different, this is something he can't remember ever doing, and he _wants _it. Breathlessly, persistently. "Dry--hurts."

"Oh!" says Mike, "right, yeah." He fumbles for the bottle--22 catches his hand, dares to pull it up to his face. Rubs Mike's palm with the pad of his thumb and slides two of Mike's fingers into the unit's mouth. Mike goes still and stiff, then says "_\--Oh_," again, really quiet and breathless.

He, when, when the unit sucks, Mike bites his lip and shivers all over. "Is that as good as the_...ha,_ as this stuff?" he says, gesturing with the bottle. Curious and normal except for how hoarse he sounds.

22 takes his mouth away, swallows. "It's, it doesn't, it doesn't last as long," he says. "But it's more. Fun."

"Yeah," says Mike, and licks his own lips. "Cool, uh...good call."

"Mm," says the unit, and makes sure the palm is good and slick. "There."

Mike takes hold of 22's dick--strokes once or twice and it's good but he stops, watching. Adjusts his grip with a sheepish grin and tries it again, looser, and this time it's _great._ The unit shivers, forces, makes, forces himself to arch up into it, instead of being still and silent frozen motionless. Lets himself make himself let himself moan at how good it feels, it feels _so good._

"Should I do more stuff?" Mike asks, quiet, eyes wide and cheeks pink, he's watching and he likes it. "Like, is there other stuff you're supposed to do?"

"You can...touch," 22 manages, tries to focus. There are a lot of things screaming in his head right now, _don't move don't beg don't make noise unless he tells you to _ clashing with _ people like to know, Bright-eyes, people like to see they're making you feel good-- _ "Other things. Try, try things. Touch places. _Fuck_."

"Yeah?" Mike says, a little shy, and smiles. "Feels good?"

"Mm," says 22, and pushes against the sheets with his heels, arching up into it.

"Good," says Mike, and leans into him to kiss his neck, too light and shy, not biting or sucking, but still good. 22 bends his head back, lets it happen, fights to pick up his hand and cup the back of Mike's head. When he pulls a little, Mike lets himself be pulled, his mouth up the side of the unit's neck and under his ear to that place that makes him shiver all over. It helps, when he tries to work with Mike instead of holding still. Makes him feel less paralyzed, less helpless and weird and broken. It's scary, but it helps.

"You can bite," says 22 all in a rush, "--a little bit, and suck, make bruises, you can if you want. It feels good, if you, if you'll stop if I want if I want you to stop."

He keeps giving instructions, things that feel good, hints and tips, and Mike keeps learning. Mike puts things together fast, synthesizes information; the unit says "you can bite" and "touch places that feel good" and he runs his mouth down to 22's collarbones and bites a nipple, really gentle, sucks, sucks harder when 22 curls up around him and moans. He finds the lube and makes sure his hand doesn't get dry while he's touching touching touching touching--he makes sure it's good, and he keeps gripping too hard again and the angle is strange but it feels good enough 22 has to concentrate. Has to focus. Can't say anything terrible, anything like he would have said to the Duke, not to Mike, or Mike's going to know what happened and--and, god, he wants to beg for more, though. Keeps having to remind himself to move when it feels good.

He's so distracted trying to stay still and move and be quiet and communicate and beg and be _normal,_ it takes him almost by surprise when the warm tension winding up inside him goes suddenly urgent, pushing him forward into Mike's hand on his dick, arching his back onto the mouth on his chest. Mike makes a noise, startled and pleased, holds onto him, kisses his chest, keeps touching and touching him until 22's shaken through it, until he's wrung out.

It's still startling to be done and be _done, _to not be hard anymore. Nobody makes him keep going, even though he could, even though this time he already kind of wants to. Mike kisses his throat and his shoulders and his lips, then follows him onto the bed as the unit flops down backwards, arms finally giving way under his weight.

They lie there for a minute, five minutes, ten minutes, Mike's weight heavy and warm on 22's chest. Mike's a little hard, again, and he squirms a bit but doesn't try to do anything about it, until it just, it just goes away, eventually. 22 likes--knowing that, that, knowing that Mike wanted it, was hard, didn't try to push him. Didn't try to go again. 22 doesn't owe anybody anything, except the respect they earn, but Mike is earning his respect. And it feels, it feels really good.

He curls over Mike, leans down and in. Kisses his bare skin, one sturdy shoulder. Mike shivers and makes warm, soft noises, twisting into it, pressing back against him. It's warm, it's nice. It's soft, it's good.

"...Did you want to do this?" says 22 abruptly, because he hates himself and being happy. "--With your, you, you, with your friend?"

Mike makes a sleepy noise like he doesn't understand the words--then he goes still, and then he turns over in bed, looking back at 22 in the dark. He looks surprised, hurt. He looks like 22 hurt him. It feels bad.

"I just, uh, just wondered," says 22, already shrinking from that hurt look. "If--"

"We were just kids," Mike says, quiet, so quiet. "I don't--I didn't know what I wanted."

That's a lie. He wanted...something, he definitely wanted something, 22 can see it in his face, hear it in his voice. But he looks hurt, talking about it, and 22 doesn't want him hurt.

"I'm sorry I look like him," he says.

"Oh--buddy, geez," says Mike, sighs. Rolls over so they're curled together, heads on the pillows, Mike's leg between 22's knees. "Dude, it's cool. Don't worry about...all of that stuff, okay? It happened, it was a long time ago, it's over now. I'm...doin' okay."

The unit doubts, doubts that, doubts it deeply and sincerely. Doesn't say so. "Do you wanna tell me?" he says instead. "About him?"

Mike is quiet for a while. When he finally talks his voice is kind of...small, smaller than he's sounded since 22 met him.

"...He was a really good guy," he says. He sounds far away. "Super smart, he got into R&D really early." He moves up in the bed, sits up on the pillow and pulls up a screen clumsily, flicking through files with awkward hands. "He was my best friend."

22 sits up too, moves in closer next to him, curious. Dreading. "...What was his name?" he says, as Mike flips through pictures of his car, his burners, the lights in the city.

"Chuck," says Mike, and he glances over at 22, quick like he's hoping, thinks, wants the unit to flinch or nod or recognize it. Know it. The unit--it's nothing, that name is nothing, it's just a word. Mike bites his lip and looks back at the screen. "Here," he says, and finds a picture. "This is him."

Mike's young, in the picture. His hair is shorter, his skin is tanned darker. Bright, white light spilling in through the window, lighting up golden specks in his hair. Mike's laughing he's young he's missing a tooth he's laughing_, _one arm around the neck of a boy with unruly hair. Bright golden yellow. Blonde, like 22. Freckles and pale and freckles all over his cheeks and arms and neck, more and thicker but still familiar. 22 reaches up, feels his own head, the short, unruly mess of his hair, bright golden yellow. Drops his hand, sees the freckles scattered over his arms. Gashes on his arms, the metal under his skin. The boy Mike is laughing with touching holding onto the boy in the photo, he's not a machine. He's young and flesh and whole and young. He's human he's like Mike he's human through and through. Not made of metal, born and grown and _human._ No commands in his head.

"He looks." 22 struggles for, he tries, he's trying to, his head hurts. "He looks..."

"He looks like you," says Mike, and the unit nods. There's so many other things to say, so much he can't can't can't can't doesn't want to think, but that's one of them. He didn't want to know how to know how to want to say it. "I mean, you look like him. What he could've grown up like."

"You think I'm him."

Mike winces back from the words, looks away, looks back, sighs through his nose. "I don't know, dude," he says. "I-- Sure, I mean, that would be…" He doesn't finish that, moves on. "But we lived together for _years, _me and him, and you've never seen me before. I'm just being stupid."

"I'm not," says 22. "I'm a bot, I'm-- And I shouldn't be, I don't wanna be him."

He knows, he sees the flash of surprise and hurt in Mike's eyes when he glances up. The unit hurries on, clarifies.

"He looks, he, he l-looks nice," he says. "He, seems good. Good, he was, y-your friend. He doesn't… deserve--"

He loses his voice for a second, mouth working silently on words that won't come out. There's a hard knot in his throat, his eyes feel hot and achy. He can't seem to take his eyes off the kids in the picture, in Deluxe in the light in the light in each other's arms together in the light.

"Aw, geez, buddy," says Mike, and puts an arm around his shoulders. The picture flickers out, and 22 stares at the place it was and feels loss and fear and strange, and painful and strange, hurting longing carve into his chest. "You're, uh… you're okay."

"I'm not, it's, it's, it's, I'm, why would they--" The unit is shaking, breathing all wrong, he's scared and it _hurts. _Eyes wet and hot. There's a sharp pain in his head, top of his skull down the middle like a nail driving down through him and he can't _remember_. "Why would they _hurt _him, why did did did they hurt me, what did he do--" Mike is saying things, trying to hold onto him, trying to calm him down, but the unit can barely hear him. "I'm not like him I don't want--!"

Mike hugs him so hard it hurts, so hard the breath goes out of 22's lungs in a sharp, tearing gasp. His hands jerk up on instinct, grab Mike and hold on so tight they ache. Burying his face in Mike's shoulder feels _right _and that makes him sob even harder, makes the fear well up like acid in his throat.

"Hey, Bright-eyes," mumbles Mike, and the name is awkward-uncertain-new in his mouth, the unit doesn't know where he heard it, how Mike learned to call him that, but it helps to hear. "You're okay, we're good."

"Deluxe called me, the Duke said, _bot, _they called, I'm, they _made _me, I'd know if they didn't," says the unit, half-pleading. "I'd remember, if, I would _remember._" He's not making any sense, Mike doesn't know what he means, he looks confused. The unit tries to say something and doesn't.

"...You don't...seem like a bot to me," Mike says eventually, quietly. He squeezes the unit back, swallows. "I dunno. Deluxe messed a lot of people up, and none of us deserved it, dude. It wasn't fair."

It shouldn't mean anything, just to hear it said, simple and clear, but it makes the unit sob.

"It wasn't fair," he repeats, and Mike's skin is hot and slick against his cheek, wet with tears, and he feels more broken right now, right now, right--fixed and doing things, giving orders, asking for what he wants, he's doing so much better and he's still broken, this is barely--he's still broken, less than normal, he wants to curl up in Mike's arms and cry and hide and it isn't fair. "It's not fair, it's, Mikey, it's not _fair._"

Mike makes a soft noise, tight like 22 punched him. Goes still for a second, and then squeezes again, hard and tight, not letting go, burying his face in, in the, blonde, in the unit's, in 22's hair.

"I know, buddy," he says, and he sounds choked now too. "No, I know, it's not. Shoot. _Shit._ It's not fair."

Mike holds onto him for a long time. 22 holds on tight, presses his fingers into the lines of muscle in Mike's back, presses his face into one warm shoulder and tries to remember, tries not to remember. When he tries to think back, he gets hungry hands on his skin, a haze of pain and need and humiliated desperation, red and gold. When he thinks back even further he gets nothing but flashes of white and blue, echoing voices too close and far away both at the same time, straps digging into his arms and legs and neck. Nausea, pain, exhaustion, then falling. Maybe somewhere under both of those things, deep down, the faintest possible echo of something warm and comfortable, familiar and good. But he has to be making that up, he's not-- He's not. He's not like Mike, he's not like Mike's friend. That's why all these things happened to him, why it's been like this, because of what he is. He knows that. He...knows that.

"...You don't have to be him," Mike says finally, softly, and his voice sounds all thick and strange, he doesn't pull away. Muffles himself in 22's hair. "If you don't want-- You don't have to worry about it."

"Yeah," says 22 miserably, because he knows that, he knows you can't pretend things aren't the way they are and make it true. If you could, he would never have gotten taken by the Duke, he wouldn't have spent god knows how long in a filthy, desperate haze and wanting and wanting and wanting and begging for things he didn't want. "I'm somebody else. If I even, if I'm _somebody_, even, y'know? I'm..._" _He runs a hand through his hair, raking his nails back over his scalp. "I don't know. Why I look like him. I'm not. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not who you want I'm sorry I don't r-remember you."

"But--" Mike says, and there's something about the way he hesitates, throat working on the words, before he closes his mouth and looks away.

"What?" says 22.

"How do you…" Mike says, and scrubs his palms at his bare thighs, not meeting the unit's eyes. His eyes are down and away, his shoulders are tight, he looks uncomfortable, every part of him in nervous tension. "How do you know you're, uh. A...bot?"

"The Duke told me," 22 says blankly. And before Mike can say it, "I know, the Duke lies, h-he's a jerk, but, in Deluxe they said-- _it's just a bot, stop fucking around and get rid of it a-already--_ " he stammers off on that--he hates that memory, it sets a hot, tight knot inside him, shame and hatred and hurt and the memory of terror. "They wouldn't have--thrown me out, if I was a person, the Duke wouldn't have--"

"You _are _a person," says Mike sharply. "I don't care if you're like--a human, or not, but dude, you're definitely a person. And…" he hesitates again, shrugs uneasily. "I dunno if you're right, about the uh...human. Thing."

"What," says 22 again, blank this time.

"People treat each other pretty bad sometimes," Mike says, "--and--you called me 'Mikey', dude. Just now. When we were talking about Chuck, you called me 'Mikey' and I never told you he used to-- I never said, you couldn't have known that."

The unit takes a gasping breath--another one, staring. "That doesn't prove," he starts, and stops, choking on the words. "But I'm not…? I'm not. Mike I'm _not, _he wouldn't have--I'm a bot, they made me to to get to be made to be made to get _used, _that's why-- The Duke said--"

"I don't think you are, bud," Mike says, small and bleak and quiet. He should be excited, should be _able _to be excited about this--he thinks 22 is his...friend, his long-lost childhood friend or, or, or, or _something_. But who would be? Being the unit being 22 being... He isn't a great thing to be. Mike's friend deserves better.

"But if I'm…" 22 can't put words around the panic that's welling slowly up inside him, the strange dread. "If I was--how could they just-- _do that, _why did he do that?! If I was a person, how-- He shouldn't have--"

"I'm sorry," Mike says roughly, and reaches out, touches the unit's face, and 22 jerks away, breathing hard, scrubbing at his face, _hurting_. "I'm really sorry, dude. I know you're...scared. I know, it's okay. Do you wanna hug?"

"Why did they do that to me?" 22 asks numbly instead of answering, and Mike groans and wraps him up in a solid arm, squeezing him. "If I was… I was a person, I was _real, _why would they do that?" he shudders, remembers the tip of a cane under his chin, forcing him to raise his head--_you don't need a name, you just need to know who you _belong _to. _"Why did he do that?"

"I dunno," Mike says, and hesitates before leaning over to press a fast, gentle kiss against 22's forehead. "He shouldn't have. Okay? That's just how Deluxe treats people, it's messed up."

22 was talking about the Duke, not whatever half-remembered scientist--made him, _changed _him, turned him from a person a boy a human kid into--_just a bot stop fucking around and get rid of it._ But there's too much to think about right now, too much to comprehend, he can't muster the words. He was a _person_. He's _somebody_, he's not some--glorified toy somebody put together in a lab, passed from owner to owner.

"...I'm sorry," says 22 hopelessly, and Mike makes another noise like he's in pain and holds onto him tighter. "I'm sorry I don't remember. I'm sorry sorry sorry I'm like this."

"It's not--" Mike starts, and seems to think better of whatever he was going to say, biting his lip. "...I'm sorry all that crap happened to you," he says finally, slower, really careful. "But there's...I mean, dude, there's nothing wrong with..._you_."

"That's definitely not, not true," 22 says, because that's an _incredibly _erroneous statement. "I'm a terrible thing t-t-t-to be, to be, this is _terrible. _I'm terrible."

That, out of all the things he's said tonight, makes Mike's jaw tighten and chin jut out stubbornly, spine straightening. "No you're _not,_" he says, like 22 is somehow ridiculous. "You're great, dude! The Duke--"

He stops. 22 winces at the name, then un-winces at the look on Mike's face, nervous and confused. "...Mike?"

"The _Duke,_" says Mike, and he looks a lot older when he looks like that, when he looks tight and dark and angry, brows pulling low enough 22 can see them through his ragged bangs. "I'm gonna beat the _shit _ out of that guy--"

"Oh," says 22. And then, "_No, _Mike, no no no no _no_, no!"

"Why?" says Mike stubbornly. "Dude, he deserves--"

"I know!" says 22, "--But if you hit him if you touch if you touch, hit, if you hurt him, he'll _kill _you!"

"I'm not scared of him!" Mike says fiercely.

"You definitely totally should be!" 22 shakes his head, grabs Mike's arms, his wrists, holds onto Mike like he can keep him there. "He'll--give, he'll sell, he'd shoot you or he'd let Kane shoot you I don't want--" He's panicking, losing track of the words again, but he can't-- The Duke has so many people with so many guns, and nobody is buying from him now and Rayon says he's--_cornered rats bite a lot harder, Bright-eyes--_ dangerous, he's dangerous now. He's always been dangerous, but Rayon says people have stopped dealing with him, are saying no to the _Duke, _ because of-- Because of what he did to the unit, because of how he treated 22, people aren't doing business with him anymore. If Mike came bursting in and did something--stupid...

"...I don't mean, he'll be mad, or he'll hurt you," 22 says, as clearly as he can. "I mean he'll _kill _you. He's...killed people. He told me."

Mike holds his eyes for a second, jaw still tight, eyes hard. Finally, looks away.

"I won't, if you don't want me to," he says. "But he deserves it."

"Yeah, he's the _worst,_" says 22, with feeling, and can't not smile just a little bit at how good it feels to say that out loud and not get a throb of pain from punishment protocols. "I'd, I, I could shoot him in the face, if I was, if I could."

"Shoot him?" says Mike, and then scrambles back on the bed as 22 lifts his scarred arm and manifests his weapon system, unfolding it in a rush of hot plasma as the air reshapes itself to fit matter that wasn't there a second ago. "Holy crap, dude!"

"I wasn't, made for," 22 says. "Deluxe doesn't make sex bots." He laughs, and then feels like a dumbass when that makes Mike go tight and hurt and grim again. "I think I was a combat unit? I thought I was made for it, but I guess I was just...changed, for it." He touches the faint seams on his arms.

"Geez, Chuck," says Mike, soft and rough, and then clamps his mouth shut and freezes, staring at the unit like he's expecting to get punched. 22 feels a rush of--lots of things, fear and anger and disappointment and guilt and he doesn't know why most of them are happening but it hurts for a minute. Everything hurts for a minute.

"It's okay," he says finally, after he lets those things happen and fade back down again. "It's, it's fine. You can call me that."

Mike's face does something. 22 isn't qualified to understand it right now. He's feeling too many things, he can't spend time figuring out what other people are thinking too.

"I don't want to call you that if it's gonna..." Mike shakes his head.

"It won't," says 22, keenly aware it's something he can't promise, that he's answering without knowing the parameters. "You can call me Chuck if you want. It's...my name?"

It's hard to say, bizarre to acknowledge. 22 shakes his head, tries to apply the designation, can't quite seem to. It's him, he's Chuck, he has to be, there's _evidence._ The comfort when he rests his head on Mike's shoulder. The way he called Mike by Chuck's old nickname for him, without thinking about it. The picture of--him, of Chuck, of him when he was Chuck, the same hair and eyes and freckles.

"...I don't know if I have a memory rollback," he says, offering. The thought of remembering what Deluxe and the Duke did to him, it makes his stomach churn. It was never worth it before, when he thought there wasn't anything worthwhile before the wipe, but now-- He doesn't know what he thinks, what he wants. He doesn't even know who he _is, _but now he could find out; who he was, what he liked. He wants to know, wants to recognize Mike, _Mikey_, the guy he must have known and can't remember.

"Only if that's okay," says Mike fiercely. "I mean it, dude. I don't want you to...mess yourself up about this. Okay? I like you too much for that." And then, while the unit is still feeling good things about that, Mike cracks a really, a nice, such a nice, wide, pretty smile and says "--Besides, I just promised like six guys I'd be super nice to you, and they'd all line up to take chunks outta me if I hurt you."

22 snorts with laughter before he can stop himself. He could, he bets, he thinks he could put some numbers to some of those threats. "They worry," he says, and shrugs. "Worry, they, they, they w-worry, about me, too much. I can-- t-t-t-take care of myself."

"They just really like you," says Mike, and smiles more, keeps smiling, so warm and bright. He looks proud, he looks so happy. "You found some...some really good guys, down here. They really look out for you."

"Like you used to," says 22, guessing. "When I was--him, when I was me, when I was a kid. Didn't you?"

Mike's smile doesn't fade, but it goes sad at the corners, around the edges. "Yeah," he says. "Yeah, I-- We looked out for each other. I tried to--" He looks away, rubs his jaw with one hand. "...Didn't do a great job, though, huh."

22 opens his mouth, closes it again, doesn't know what to say to that. "I don't know, what I'm supposed to say," he says.

"Oh," says Mike, and looks surprised, embarrassed. "No, I--sorry, dude. I'm just...I dunno, ignore me."

"Okay," says 22. "Can I suck your dick again?"

Mike sputters. "Can," he says, "--_oh_, uh, buddy, geez!"

"Is that-- Yes?" says 22 hopefully.

"Uh," says Mike again, and then catches sight of 22's face and stops, lips parted a little, eyes all dark and soft. "...No," he says.

22's heart falls really hard, really fast. Harder and faster than he would have thought it would, hurting more than he would've thought. "Sorry," he says, over the rushing in his ears. _You fucked up, he doesn't want to, he doesn't want you anymore. _ "I'm, is it because I'm--"

"Hey, dude," Mike says, and takes his wrist, squeezes it. "No, hey. I'm just saying, I already got off like three times, and you only got one." He cocks his head a little. "Doesn't seem fair, so I was thinking I could help you out a little, first."

_Oh_ .

Well, that's--that's very, that's extremely, very preferable to Mike not wanting to do things with him, that's _very _good. Mike learns fast, is good at, is good, can use his body well, he'll learn to be even better, fast. And it already felt good, when he didn't even know how to do anything.

"Is _that _a yes?" Mike says, and the unit swallows, licks his lips, swallows again, smiles, and feels it come out shy and small and warm. Can't meet Mike's eyes as he nods. "Oh _yeah, _dude, let's do this."

Mike learns exponentially. He's not good at everything right as he starts out, but he picks things up _fast, _stupid-fast, ridiculously fast. The unit learns things about him too, grabs his hair again and feels Mike moan around his dick, pets his head and sees him shiver. Mike would, does, choke himself on the unit's dick for positive reinforcement, gags once or twice and then gets it and then loses it again and then pulls off and growls.

"You made this look _really easy,_" he says. "Dang, buddy!"

"I can switch off my gag reflex," says 22, in the interests of being fair. He hasn't actually turned it back on since Rayon rescued him--keeps meaning to, never gets around to it. Only remembers when he's touching himself, fingers in his mouth, and he can't turn it on then.

Mike grumbles and licks his lips, pink and soft from being used. 22 wants it back on him, that mouth, wants it back again. Squirms a little, and Mike takes the hint. Goes back to practicing, bumps his head up against 22's hand to have fingers in his hair and hums happily when he gets them.

It takes a while to come, but it's good when he does, so good. Easier and softer, no back-breaking screaming sobbing shaking pleasure, no whiting out. Just a hot, sweet crest of good feeling, and then laughing, startled and kind of helpless, because not only does Mike not do it, not finish, not swallow, he pulls back like a dog who got his nose flicked and goes "agh" and then looks embarrassed about it. 22 lets out a cracked giggle at the look on his face, and then Mike laughs too, and then both of them kind of lie there laughing for a while, and Mike's so _warm _and that felt so...good. Just good, nothing else, just _good._

Mike goes still eventually, his laughing turns to soft, happy sounds and then to faint, slow breathing. 22 touches his hair, and stares up at the ceiling, and lets sleep override everything else and make him soft and dark and quiet inside.


	4. Resource Reclamation

Mike wakes up because there's a faint, high whining sound coming from somewhere nearby, and something shifting against him, jolting him out of sleep. He stares around, bleary, startled and confused, and then scrambles upright as everything comes flooding back into place. 22, Chuck, sleeping over, sex. Skylark Motel.

Chuck—22—is the source of the noise and the movement that woke Mike up. He's pressed flat on his back on the bed, hands clenched tight in the rumpled sheets, legs bent and open and shifting restlessly. His toes curl, his spine arches a little off the sheets and then collapses back with another high, tight whine. He's saying something, too tiny to make out, between helpless noises—when Mike leans over him, startled and alarmed, he makes out a desperate rush of words, glitching and stuttering and then flowing smooth and then glitching again.

"Please I'll be g-g-g-g— I'll be, my Duke I'll be good," 22 whispers, strangled and small, and jerks again. "—We'll get it up to specs sir it hurts hurts hurts p-please let me fix the schematics I can fffix it sir it's just a few more surgeries please sir _don't—_"

Mike hovers, startled and sick to his stomach and not sure what to do—grabs 22's shoulder, shakes him a little bit, but 22 just goes frozen-still at his touch, hands clenching in the sheets so hard his knuckles go white. Whimpers again, pleading with somebody inside his head. Mike stares around desperately, finds a clock—it's three in the morning, but—he doesn't know what to do, he doesn't know how to fix this one. He pulls up his comm.

"Rayon? _Rayon!_"

It takes a second for the call to go through—22 just lies there, still twitching and jerking, eyes flashing through his lids. Mike tries to shake him again—nothing.

"Mike," says Rayon's voice. "There better be a _very _good reason you're on my line."

"It's 22," says Mike, fast and urgent, tripping over the words. "I woke up and he was all—he won't wake up, I think he's—glitching, or something!"

There's a split second of silence, and then a sound of abruptly-shifting fabric. "I'm on my way," says Rayon briefly, and the call cuts out.

Mike doesn't want to leave the bed, but he makes himself scramble up, finds his boxers where they ended up on the ground, gets those on. He's about to try looking for his pants when 22 lets out another shaking cry, and Mike stops worrying about clothes. He's been protecting Chuck from bullies since they were kids, he's heard him make that desperate, hurting noise before, and usually it means somebody needs to get punched.

But there's nobody Mike can fight, this time. He hovers instead, touches Chuck's face helplessly, pets his short hair, pulls his hand away when that makes Chuck go still again and sob.

Rayon doesn't knock before he comes in, just pushes through the door with another guy in tow, an older white guy with red hair that's going grey and a pair of glasses shoved onto his nose. They're both in black pants and undershirts, and neither of them have sunglasses on, and it's almost kind of freaky how much less put together Rayon looks without his suit. He gives Mike a hard, worried, suspicious look, and then hurries forward and settles down on the bed, grabs 22's shoulder.

"I shook him a couple of times," says Mike, and rakes a hand through his hair, feeling panicky, desperate energy bounce pointlessly through his bones. He wants to do something, he wants to _help_, but he doesn't know how. "He's just _lying _there, he won't wake up!"

"Mm," says Rayon tersely, and bares his teeth for a second, hissing a breath out through them. There are shadows under his eyes Mike hasn't seen before, a tight muscle working in his jaw. "...Come on, kid, what are they doin' to you now—"

"I can try to get access," says the other guy, and drops down next to 22's head. "If he'll let me. If he won't…"

"I'm not overriding him unless I have to," Rayon says sharply, and the other guy nods, looking distracted and grim. "Mike, what happened?"

"I woke up because he was doin' this!" Mike says, helpless. "I dunno, man, I didn't see—"

"17," says Rayon, cutting him off. "Anything?"

"Come on, Bright-eyes," the other guy murmurs, and rests a big hand on Chuck's forehead, rubs a thumb at one of his temples. "Let me in there…"

"_Nnh_," 22 gasps, and spasms. "Sir please sir don't please please p-p-p-please my Duke you don't have to—I'll be good you don't have to I'll do it you don't h-h-have to override to override me please sir I'm project c-compliant I'm not defective I'll _fix it, _please!"

"God," says 17, and pulls his hand away, eyes tight with misery, mouth pressed into a thin line. "Kid— Fuck."

"Project compliant," Rayon says. "That's not the Duke."

"We were talking about Deluxe," Mike says, and then winces as two pairs of sharp, cold eyes focus on him. "I knew him, up there, we were friends—"

"I don't care what you were," Rayon says, tight and hard, "—What did you think you were _doing_, talking to our boy about—"

"There we go," says 17, and a blue screen blooms in the dark. Chuck whimpers again, miserable and scared, and 17 rests a hand on his chest, rubbing a slow, comforting circle, scrolling with the other hand. "He's running some kind of deep scan program— Trying to get around whatever they did to his memory files, it looks like." He rubs a hand at his face, grimacing. "What's he _looking _for? There's nothing good back there, there's nothing _worth _remembering!"

Mike's heart does a queasy, agonizing flip in his chest. "I," he starts, and can't finish the words. "I'm…" he moves up the bed, ignoring Rayon's sharp glare; reaches out and grabs one of 22's shaking hands. Because he knows, he knows what 22's looking for, and he knows without a shadow of a doubt it's Mike's own stupid fault. "Hey. Hey, easy, Chuckles, you're okay, you're good, it's—just me. It's Mike."

Chuck twitches again, his face twists, and his chin crumples and oh, god, shoot, no. "_Mike,_" he repeats, and then he's sobbing, his pleas twisting into shapeless, shuddering gasps. "Mike they're, it h-hurts I'm, I'll be good my my my Duke sir please _Mike, _sir I'm compliant, can I just can I can I can I see, my, my, Mike—"

Rayon gives Mike a look so cold it almost knocks him off the bed, reaches out and wrenches Mike's hand away with startling strength, gripping hard enough his wrist aches. "How about you keep your hands to your _self,_" he says, soft and hard, and looks back up at the other Skylark. "17, can we stop the scan?"

"We'll have to manually end it," 17 says, and winces as Chuck sobs again, opening more screens with deft flicks of his fingers. "We gotta get him to respond to commands first."

"Right," says Rayon, and reaches out and just—scoops Chuck up off the bed, pulls him up into one arm and leans in to whisper in his ear, low and steady and slow. 22's eyes open for a second, but they don't seem to see anything. He just stares blindly out at the room with flashing, unfocused eyes and then sobs and closes them again, arms coming up to cling onto Rayon tight enough the guy lets out a sharp huff of air and winces. He doesn't stop talking, though.

Mike is suddenly aware that he's only wearing his boxers, that 22 isn't wearing anything at all. He kind of feels like he should do something about that, throw a blanket over 22 or something, but his wrist is still aching from Rayon's grip and he doesn't feel like he should get too close right now. He keeps hearing his own name in the mess of sobbing and pleading, and it hurts like a knife twisting in his gut, a little worse every time. _ Mike please they're hurting me Mike please don't hurt me please sir just let me see him please Mike it hurts— _

The stream of breathless pleading cuts off a second later as 22 gives a sudden jerk and a gasp. Rayon keeps a hold of him as he shakes, squeezing his shoulders, raising his voice over Chuck's gasping. "—Yeah, you got it, Bright-eyes," he says. "You're gonna be good, aren't you, you're gonna be good—"

"I'll be good," 22 echoes, and shudders. "You have to ask, ask, ask permission ask to play with—"

"I got permission," Rayon says, and there's a tight, almost pained edge to his voice, the look on his normally blank face. "He told you to be good for me, remember?"

"Yes, s-s-sir," Chuck whispers, and drops his face in Rayon's shoulder, kisses his neck wet and filthy and whimpers against his skin. Rayon twitches and tenses, jerks like he wants to let go and then breathes out very slowly, lips pressed into a tight, unhappy line. 17 makes a small, pained noise—Mike doesn't, but only because his throat just kind of locked up.

"Okay, kid," says Rayon, brief and low. "You be good, and—end the scan."

22 moans, kisses his neck again, hopeful. Murmurs something small and shivery and starts to slide a hand down Rayon's chest. Rayon twitches again, gets a hold of his arm and grips it tight.

"_Bot,_" he says, hard and rough. "End the scan, _now_."

"Yessir," says Chuck, breathy and soft, and his eyes flash one more time, blinding, and then dim. He gasps and goes still, slumping limp against Rayon's chest.

"Fuck," says 17 again, and pushes his glasses up to rub the bridge of his nose. His voice is shaking a little bit, barely audible. "...God."

"You with us?" Rayon says, and he still sounds...rattled, ruffled. Not happy. He's not looking at Mike, not looking at anybody, but Mike can't stop staring. Rayon takes 22's shoulder, gives it a firm shake; 22 moans faintly, sucks in a breath and then another one and then opens his eyes blearily, panting. "Br— 22, sound off."

22 groans. "...I thought I thought I thought…" he whispers, and buries his face in Rayon's shoulder again—not kissing him this time, just clinging. Shakes his head. "My, sir? Mr. R— Sir, Rayon, sir?"

"There you go," says Rayon. "Kid, what the _hell _were you thinkin'?"

"A deep memory scan?!" 17 is saying at the same time, lined face tight with frustration. "No backup, no failsafes, no override approval—did you even get anything _salvageable _going in like that?! Fuck, kid, we got no idea how their mindwipe tech works up there, if you go in there without administrator approval you're gonna fry your brain—"

22 barely seems to hear them. He's still shaking, curling up to Rayon's side, holding on. Painful nostalgia fights with weird, guilty jealousy in Mike's chest; he shifts uneasily, and Rayon gives him a narrow-eyed look.

"I just wanted…" 22 whispers eventually, and sniffs. "I was—" He stops, tenses abruptly. "—Mike?"

"Yeah?" says Mike, startled and eager, and refuses to flinch back when both of the Skylarks glower at him. "I'm right here, buddy."

"I, I, I screamed for, I wanted you," 22 says, and his hand comes up to the top of his head, rubs there, like he's feeling for something. "So they, they took you, out of, they took you out of me, I screamed for you to come so they burned they burned they wiped you out of my head and they _threw me away._"

Mike's stomach lurches so badly it feels like he's going to throw up for a second. "Oh," he says thinly, and clenches his hands on his thighs. He feels really young all of a sudden, really stupid and pathetic, sitting there half-naked and lost and hurt. "Oh, buddy, geez."

"They threw me away," Chuck repeats, and his hands knot in the back of Rayon's undershirt, his voice cracks and wavers. "They threw, threw me, they, threw me off the dome they threw me _away_, down the, they threw me down with the, with, down with the _garbage_."

17 makes a spasmodic move forward, reaches out and lays a hand on Chuck's back, rubbing between his shoulder blades. "You're not garbage," he says, low and gentle and warm. "You're a good kid, you're our 22, remember? They didn't know what they were givin' up on—their loss."

"I'm not," 22 repeats, and sniffs hard, makes a hiccupy noise. "—I'm _not, _'m not garbage."

Mike makes a noise, involuntary and choking on it, eases forward in the bed and finds one of Chuck's wrists—his left one, the scars welted and knotted under his fingers. "You're not," he says, hurting and hopeful, and 22 shudders. "You're so smart, dude, you're a really good guy, Kane Co's just—the worst, that's all."

22 sniffs, gives a wet, shaky little noise that might be another sob or might be a tiny laugh. His hand gropes out, twists, grabs Mike's wrist so they're holding onto each other.

"Why would you go digging through that stuff?" Rayon says, tight and tired more than accusing. He's still holding on, one hand firm and open on the back of Chuck's neck. "What were you even lookin' for?"

"...Before," 22 says, and clears his throat as his voice cracks. "Stuff, from, I want to know who I was. Before."

"Whose idea was that?" says Rayon, and Mike draws himself up a little at the glance Rayon gives him, sidelong and irritated. But 22 is already shaking his head.

"Mine," he says, soft and shaking but clear. "It was. Mine, my, my, it was, idea. My idea. I wanted to know. I want to."

"From where I'm sitting," says Rayon quietly, "...doesn't look like it's worth it."

Chuck swallows, lifts his head, glances over at Mike. Back up at Rayon. "The person who I who I am was who was who I am—" he stops, groans to himself, bumps his forehead sharply against Rayon's shoulder. "...The person. Who I. Was," he gets out, every word deliberate and painfully careful. "He doesn't deserve. What happened to us. And if I let him let, let him go—he dies. They kill him. Like they tried. They tried to kill him. I don't w-w-want them, want them to."

"...Mm," says 17, and sits back on the bed, folding his arms. "Okay. Fair."

Mike can't look away from 22's shaking shoulders, the bare arch of his spine. Something hot and pained and proud has taken up residence where his heart should be, sitting heavy and strangling on his lungs.

Rayon still doesn't look convinced, but he also looks different from how Mike has ever seen him, weirdly soft and intense, brows furrowed. 22 holds his eyes for a long minute, until finally Rayon takes a deep, deep breath and shakes his head.

"...Your call, Bright-eyes," he says, and runs a hand over his hair. "But there's gotta be a better way to do it than that. I'm not bein' part of whatever that was."

"Yeah, for sure," Mike says fervently. "Dude, that was the worst thing I've ever seen, you scared the crap out of me."

"Oh," says Chuck, looking startled. "I...was it bad?"

"It was horrible," says 17. "Don't go scaring me like that, kiddo, I got enough gray hairs already."

"Sorry?" says 22, and blinks, eyes flickering. Looks at Rayon, cheeks going abruptly red. "Oh, no," he says, suddenly mortified. "I, I, sorry, I, thought I was still, I forgot, who I was, am, who I am now, I forgot you don't want—"

"All good," says Rayon, fast and firm. "Water under the bridge."

"But—" 22 reaches out, brushes the heel of his hand at Rayon's neck like he's trying to wipe away the place he kissed, face still vividly red. "I, shit, shoot, I mean, I, I'm sorry, though."

"_Easy_," says Rayon sharply, and takes Chuck's wrist, pulling it firmly away from him. "Hands to yourself, 22."

22 blinks, crumples. "Sorry."

"Do you...feel okay now?" Mike says cautiously, and 22 glances at him and goes even redder for some reason, lips pressing into an uneven line. "Look, dude, it'd be cool if you remembered but it's seriously not important enough for you to do—whatever you did. I wasn't _that _good of a roommate, ha."

"We lived together?" says Chuck, looking startled and amazed. "I, I was, we were, we grew up together?"

"I—yeah, I mean, yeah, but—"

"A couple good memories isn't worth the entire mess of stuff it comes with," Rayon says tensely. His shoulders are very straight and tight, one of his hands is still on 22's shoulder. "Kid, _listen._"

"I'm listening!" Chuck says, and rakes through his fuzz of short hair with both hands. "I know! I know, but, but _sir, _but I already re-re-re-remember most of the _shitty _stuff, the, bad things, the bad parts, that happened to me! I, I remember waking up and—" he hesitates as he's lowering his hands, eyes catching on his missing pinky—his face twists for a second, remembered grief and pain, before he jerks them down. "And hurting and waking up on the trash, and the Duke putting orders in my head, and I, and I, and _Kane, _I just saw—Kane, yelling at—them—to get rid of me, and the, the things, the—" he winces. "...The things, the D-d-duke did. I want to remember something _happy_." He looks at Mike, hopeful and bright-eyed like he didn't just say about six awful things in a row. "...We were happy," he says. "Right?"

"Yeah," says Mike, because that's one question he can answer without having to think about it. Before he became a cadet, before Chuck vanished into R&D, before Mike figured out the mountain of skeletons and lies his perfect world was built on. Those are some of the best times he can remember. They _were _happy. He's not going to lie about it, even if the Skylarks are watching him like a pair of hawks.

"I might have, have, I could've known, something about my mom and dad," says 22 quietly, amazed, and _that _shakes the cool, tense disapproval in Rayon's expression. He doesn't look happy, but at least he's not glowering at Mike anymore. 22 looks up at Mike, wide-eyed. "Did you know them, did I know them? Can we call them, do you—?"

Oh. Shoot. Mike swallows hard, wishes he was wearing more than his boxers, remembers that Chuck is still kind of completely naked and then feels bad for being self-conscious. "...I don't think either of us knew our parents super well, dude," he says, as gently as he can. "My mom died when I was two and...your parents died when you were like, four."

He never thought he'd have to break that news, and it feels really just, incredibly bad to see the way Chuck's face falls, his shoulders slumping. For a minute he looks really thin and young, hunched in on himself, eyes sad and dim. "Oh," he says quietly. "I, yeah. I, I, okay."

"But you used to tell me stories about them, sometimes," Mike says, desperate to wipe away some of that awful old, new loss in 22's eyes. 22 glances up, and his eyes give a tentative kind of flicker. "You did remember them, a little bit. It does...it really sucks though, dude, I know it sucks."

22 nods, bites his lip, squares his jaw and nods again, firmer this time. "This is why I, I need to know," he says, and looks at Rayon with new determination, forcing the words out in order like every word is an effort. "Because. I should know. It's not Mike's job to—tell me. I should know things, about who I am, and he shouldn't have to try to try to do it for me. He _can't _do it for me."

Rayon looks more convinced by dead parents than he does by anything Mike had to offer. "And what's that gonna look like?" he says, steadily cool and tense. "Another scan?"

"I don't...don't know." Chuck swallows hard. "Uh...bad, probably. But. You don't have to, to be, you don't have to watch. Sir. You can leave it to me, I'll...handle, I'll h-handle, take care of it. Skylarks take care of their own p—their own problems."

Rayon's face does something strange, expression twitching. "I'm not...in the habit of leavin' my men down and out," he says.

"But I can handle it!" says 22 again. "I can, c-c-c-c-c— Ahh, I, I can handle it, on my own!"

Mike is immediately, intensely resolved that there's no way in hell he's leaving Chuck to handle it on his own—by the subtle tensing of Rayon's jaw, he just thought basically the same thing.

"...It's up to you if you want to go through with this," he says, after a long, silent second. He reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose—there are shadows under his eyes that Mike's never seen before. "But not tonight. You need to sleep, and you need to think it over."

"Tomorrow morning?" says 22.

"Tomorrow afternoon," Rayon says, and 22 opens his mouth like he wants to protest and then crumples back in on himself when Rayon gives him a very pointed look. "Final offer, kid. I'm not lettin' you do this until you've thought it over."

"I'm not gonna change my mind," says 22, chin jutting stubbornly, shoulders square. He looks like Chuck, but not the Chuck that Mike remembers. Mike remembers a weedy kid, gangly arms and legs and huge, scared eyes—22 has jutting bones and a broad chest full of clear-cut ribs, and there are hollows under his cheekbones and he looks so much _older. _Kind of grown up and cool, even without his suit and gloves.

"And if you don't, we'll get it done," Rayon says, apparently completely unfazed by how grown-up and cool Chuck has gotten. He looks at Mike, and the openness of his face shuts _right _back up again. "...You can come back tonight," he says, and he doesn't actually say "get the hell out of my motel", but it's there in the cool, testing levelness of his gaze. Mike meets it, and doesn't argue.

—

It's a rough day. 22 keeps oscillating wildly between breathless excitement and roiling, sickening dread. The other Skylarks keep...stopping, checking in on him, making awkward conversation where they pointedly don't ask about Mike Chilton or what he was doing in 22's room last night. 22 makes awkward conversation back at them, and doesn't tell them.

He tells 59, though.

"Since you were _kids_?" 59 says, and whistles. "Geez, that's crazy. Well...I've heard he's a good dude. There's way worse people you could know, y'know?"

"Yeah," says 22, and fidgets for a minute. Confides, "...My name was, is, my name, it's Chuck."

"Chuck," repeats 59, and looks him up and down. "Yeah, I could see it. Are you gonna keep it?"

22 blinks at him. "It's my…?"

"Just because you used to be called that, it doesn't mean you have to keep it," says 59. "I changed my name, when I came to work for Mr. Rayon."

"You mean you, your parents didn't name—you, 59?" says 22, and 59 kicks him, grinning. "I'm sh-sh-sh-shocked."

"All I'm saying," 59 says patiently, "—is just because you know who you used to be, that doesn't change who you are now. Chuck's cool, I'd like to get to know him. But so's 22."

"I'll tell him you—said so," says 22, and only chokes up a little bit, really. Barely at all.

Mike comes back to the motel that afternoon, at five on the dot—like he was forcing himself to wait until then and he's finally allowed to show up. 22's surprised it took him this long—he's heard things, about Mike, and he knows him well enough to know Mike doesn't like to wait, likes to do things fast and without worrying about the consequences. 22 was surprised he left in the first place. Then again, people don't really say "no" to Rayon. At least not when he looks at them like he looked last night.

Anyway, 22 has been expecting Mike for a while by the time Mike comes skidding into the courtyard, puts his car in park and swings out of it. Mike looks around the courtyard and sees the other Skylarks standing around watching him, and starts to say something and then sees 22 standing, in the shadows, near the door. His face goes all...soft, and bright, and worried, and hopeful, and hurt. 22 reaches up and touches his hair, suddenly wanting to fix it, and for a second he doesn't know why there's nothing there to fix.

"Hey!" says Mike, and comes hurrying over. "Are you—"

The other Skylarks nearby shift around, sidle a little bit closer and close 22 part of the way off behind a wall of black suits. 22 blinks around at them, feels something weird and fluttery and warm bloom up in his chest.

"Hey," he says, and reaches out cautiously, touches the shoulder of the guy in front of him—72. "It's cool, guys, I-I-I-I'm fine."

"Yeah?" 103 glances back at him, eyes narrowed, and then sniffs and steps away again, fixing Mike with the look he gives the delivery drones when they overcharge for produce. "...Well, good. You let us know if that changes."

Mike flattens his hands at his sides and stands at a kind of uncomfortable attention until the Skylarks have all given them space, and then he goes back to looking at 22 like there's nobody else in the whole city. It's kind of scary, and kind of flattering. 22 fidgets for a second, and then steps forward and leans down to kiss Mike gently, tilting his chin up with a hand when he goes still and startled.

"Hi," 22 says—late, should have started with that, oops. Scrambles for a second, then manages, "...Did you—sleep?"

Mike half-laughs. "Not much," he says. "How, uh...how do you feel?"

22 thinks about it. The unit is, he, it's, not easy to tell, sometimes, and Mike seems to be asking a real question, looking for an answer.

"I'm scared," he says finally, quietly, so the other guys don't hear him and get upset. It's hard enough to handle the way Mike takes a deep breath and nods, eyes fixed on his face, worried and bright.

"You don't have to do this, dude," Mike says, and reaches out, hesitates, puts his hands on 22's arms, his shoulders, rubbing up and down a little bit. "Not for me."

"I'm not doing. I-it, for you," says 22. "So that's okay. But. Thanks for saying so."

Mike stares at him, and then laughs, a weird, warm, slightly shaky laugh. "Yeah," he says. "Geez, yeah. Okay. Let's...let's do this."

22 messages 17, and then Rayon, as they head back into the motel. Rayon is usually doing business until pretty late in the evening, and he sends back a brief message telling them not to get started without him. 17 is up the tree that grows through the motel, messing around with wiring, so instead of waiting around, 22 shows Mike some more of the Buicks, shows him the upgraded phones he made, shows him the microwave. Kisses him behind the garage, until Mike's face is flushed and his lips look softer and less frowning and worried.

It's easier to run his hands through Mike's hair and feel him sigh, to pull him in by his jacket lapels and press him up against walls to kiss him, than it is to think about what he's going to do tonight. 22 has done—research, has seen some of the guys around the motel who are together, the things they do and the ways they act, and he tries them out with more and more enthusiasm as they keep not going wrong. As Mike keeps liking them. It feels good. Warm and familiar when they touch, and good and new when they kiss. Like they really were friends for a long time, even if 22 doesn't remember it. Yet.

They're down in the lounge, talking about Mike's car, when 22 gets a message from Rayon.

_Still sure?_

22 falters, bites his lip and then takes a deep breath and pulls up a keyboard.

_yes sir_

Mike glances over when the unit stops talking, sees the message on the screen and goes still. Looks up at him, worried again. 22 tries to smile at him, and then looks down again as his comm pings.

_My suite._

—

22 leads the way up, because Mike's never been up to Room 1. 22 hasn't either, but everybody knows where it is. In the middle of the building, the most secure place it can be, with the trunk of the tree built around it. The whole building would have to come down, the tree would have to be torn apart, for Room 1 to be compromised.

22 knocks as politely as he can, and there's a few seconds of wait before the door gives a little click and a hiss and all the bolts inside the fake wood unlatch. Inside is all dark blue, black, grey, silver. A desk, a bank of monitors. In the next room over, a big bed with pale, crisp sheets and a black comforter. Across the room from the desk, a mini-fridge and some couches.

It looks clean and neat and not used. 22 steps in, looking around, sees a tall figure in a black suit sitting behind the desk and stands hastily up straight.

"22," says Rayon, and looks at Mike. It takes him a long few seconds to say, "...Mike."

There's a knock behind them; Rayon glances at the monitors, and then reaches down to the desk and presses something, lets in 17 with an armful of miscellaneous bits and pieces. "Sorry," he says, "I was halfway through— Well, it doesn't matter— 22, kiddo, you sure about this?"

"Everybody, you, you all, you keep _asking _that," says 22, nettled. "_Yeah, _I'm sure! It'll suck, and then, I, it'll be over! It's fine! I'll be fine!"

"Right," says 17, and shakes his head. "Well, I brought some stuff to help." He pulls out the things he's holding, juggles them messily, doing things, talking, instead of worrying. "—Stasis system, might help keep your adrenaline response from kicking in, help control—things, uh..."

"Are we going down to my room?" 22 says, determined. "Let's—go where we're going, and d-do what we're—doing."

Rayon doesn't answer, but when he comes around the desk he doesn't head for the door; he heads for the bedroom on the opposite wall. 22 follows him, really glad he's got Mike there, looking just as nervous and not sure. Really glad he's got Mike to touch and kiss and and and be with now, so he doesn't have to feel that awful, longing heat shoot up in his stomach at the thought of going into Mr. Rayon's room and onto, into, being in his bed. He's still...really handsome and cool and competent and kind and cool and kind and cool and _handsome, _but 22 knows, it's not going to be like that. Rayon doesn't want it to. The unit was a mess, has been a mess, even the first time, when Rayon touched him, he looked, he was, pity, in his eyes, afterward. The unit is a mess.

But Mike is also handsome and cool, and competent and kind, and he likes 22 anyway. So maybe it doesn't have anything to do with him being a mess. Maybe Rayon just...is only into bots. Or something.

"You ready?" Mike asks him, and reaches out, fast and careful, and takes 22's hand. He twitches for just a second when he touches 22's bad fingers, the place where his pinky should, should, should, isn't, should be, but then he holds on even tighter, winds their fingers together. It's warm, nice. Mike's hands are big and warm and solid.

"Sure," says the unit. "Yeah! Sure. Cool. Let's go."

17 gets him all set up, sticks a few nodes on 22's body, in a couple of places, and turns them on, and 22 feels the unit slowly relax. His body, the unit, he, slowly, just, goes still, his body calms down. Heart-rate slowing, breath going slower, longer. Feels his internal temperature drop a few degrees. He can still feel the fear, but it's further away now, now his body isn't feeling it, just his brain.

17 puts a hand on 22's forehead, brushes his hair back. He does that, sometimes, he did that, when he was helping with 22's fucked up brain. He'd touch 22's head and pet his hair back and it's nice, it means he's safe. It means it'll be okay.

"Okay," says 22, and closes his eyes, finding his overrides, a full memory rollback, starting the program before he can feel afraid about it. "Okay. Initiate rollback. Verify?"

"Do it," Rayon says, quiet and steady, and it's not the right wording but 22 knows what it means. His system accepts it, he can feel the soft shutdown eating at the edges of him.

"Don't wake me up," he says, with the last pieces of him. "Don't—d-don't. I'll be back soon."

"You better," says Mike quietly, and his hand is still big and warm, warmer now that 22 is shutting down, going cold and still inside.

"Okay," says, says says, "Okay—"

22 is sitting on a bed, in a pod, in the sunshine. He looks down at his arms; they're bare and pale and clean, freckled. A bruise on his elbow. No scars. Ten fingers.

"...Do you wanna be friends?" says the kid across from him, and Chuck looks up and sees his podmate, sees a kid with messy brown hair and a missing tooth in his shy smile, sees Mike, small and scruffy and grinning hopefully.

"No," says 22's mouth, voice all high and small, his but not his. "Leave me alone."

"It's not so bad here," Mike says, still trying, hopeful. "I mean—"

"Please stop," says Chuck, and the bed he's sitting on is different, different place, different time, he's sitting on the side of a cold flat table with pads and straps and he doesn't want to, not yet, he can't. "Please, just give me a, a _hh_, a minute, _please_—"

"If you're not going to comply, I'm going to call Security—"

"I'm compliant, just, please, give me a _second, _sir please—"

"We don't have all day, boy!" A face he doesn't know but he hates but he doesn't recognize but the head of his department waves a hand and the guys holding onto his shoulders push him back and down, get his wrists as he flails for balance and man-handle him flat on the table and he just wanted to stop for a second he just wanted to _breathe_ for a second—

"Breathe," says Rayon, Mr. Rayon, he's here and the unit is—scanning, still, 22's just remembering, he has to _breathe._

_"Breathe,_ " says Chuck's manager, and puts a warm, heavy hand on Chuck's shoulder, squeezing, watching him with sharp eyes, squeezing as Chuck breathes in, relaxing his grip as he breathes out. Chuck's ribs are bruised, he hurts all over, he didn't do anything wrong it's not _fair— _"Slower. You're alright. You get used to it, down here. Breathe."

"I'm _trying_," says 22's mouth, and Chuck takes a couple of gasping breaths.

His manager says "slower, kid," Mike says "come on, Chuckles!" the Duke says "like you mean it, baby," and Mr. Rayon says "_breathe_".

—

This whole thing is kind of terrifying, and the worst, and Mike hates it.

At least it's better than last time: Chuck's dressed, for one thing, and he doesn't look so terrifyingly thin and shaken, racked and tortured and helpless, when he's dressed. The things 17 put on him are pulsing slowly, and when Mike takes 22's wrist and presses two fingers to it, the pulse lines up with 22's steady, pounding heartbeat.

His eyes burn through his eyelashes now, flickering blue and bright. Mike watches as Chuck's face twitches faintly, eyes darting like he's dreaming; takes in the differences, the ways his face has changed. Short hair, growing shaggier and longer on top but cropped way shorter to his skull than it ever was when they were kids. Chuck had been small, smaller than Mike, somehow frail and soft at the same time, skinny shoulders and soft, round face. He'd just been starting to shoot up like a tree the last time Mike saw him, losing weight and gaining height with startling speed. Mike didn't get to see the places in between, the interim, but he can kind of...imagine the trajectory, from what he saw. The gawky in-between phases of skinny shoulders and gangling limbs. Eventually, this scarred, raw-boned young man with hollow cheeks and a sharp jaw and collarbones standing out like knives above the collar of his unbuttoned shirt.

Mike rubs his thumb on the inside of Chuck's—22's—wrist, and tries not to feel so desperately, miserably awful about this whole thing.

"...You knew him before, huh?" says 17.

Mike startles—he kind of forgot the other two guys were there. "Uh," he says. "Yeah."

17 still has his hand on Chuck's head, resting in his hair. It's a weirdly intimate gesture, and Mike—Mike's seen— Mike's _been _looked at like the way these two guys look at Chuck. Warm, and proprietary and proud, fond of him. Like he's more than their friend or their coworker. Like he's their—_kid_, like he's—

Thinking about that kind of makes Mike want to slap the guy's hand away, so he stops thinking about that. Rayon's not like Kane. The way he's been treating 22, even when it sounds like he was so messed up he was barely functioning for a while there—he's not like Kane. Chuck's been through enough stuff, if one of the toughest, coolest guys in the city has decided he's gonna treat him like a son, or whatever this is, whatever's going on—none of Mike's business.

"Just friends?" 17 says, mock-casually.

"Back then, yeah," says Mike. He'd like to still be friends, but he's also pretty sure people who are just friends don't do things like...all the stuff they did last night. He thinks. Maybe.

22 twitches and makes a soft, painful noise, a faint little whine, and Mike is distracted. He squeezes Chuck's wrist, and 17 hisses quietly and pets Chuck's hair some more. The twitching fades, Chuck stops making the noise. Catches a breath, and then another one, brief and then longer, deeper.

"Rollback inquiry?" says 17 quietly, hopefully.

"3.87%," says 22, lips barely moving.

"Oof," says 17. "It's been...what, ten minutes? Four percent in ten minutes..."

"Is that bad?" Mike says.

"I'm thinking," says 17. "If it keeps going at the same rate—" he grimaces. "We're gonna be here for a while."

"How long is 'a while'?" says Mike apprehensively. "Like—it's not gonna be days, or—"

"Four or five hours," says 17. "Give or take."

Mike slumps, half relieved and half disappointed. "Geez."

"He can take as much time as he needs," says Rayon, coolly disapproving. "To do the thing right."

He's right, but something about the way he says it puts Mike's hackles up. "What's your problem with me, man?" he says, and Rayon's expression twitches, a flash of something brief and startled. "You— I mean, you had him talk to me, you hooked us up on purpose, right?"

"Oh is _that _why you had 22 come up there in the middle of a meeting?" 17 says, apparently not noticing the way Rayon's lips thin and he shoots a fast look in 17's direction. "Good call, boss. Y'know he was getting ready to try and hit on 69 next?"

"What?" says Mike, half-laughing in disbelief. "What, like, that huge scary-looking guy with the tattoo on his face?"

"He's a big teddy bear once you get to know him," says 17, against all evidence Mike has seen to the contrary. "Loves the kid like a little brother, he'd never go for it. None of us would."

It puts an uneasy kind of twitch in Mike's stomach, knowing Chuck was that desperate, desperate enough to ask the other guys in his gang. Like if he wanted to get with somebody that bad...maybe Mike was just convenient? Maybe he went for it because Mike was willing to let him, maybe—

22 stirs, lips parting, eyelids fluttering again. He murmurs something, and Mike can barely hear his voice, but he knows—he knows. _Mikey_.

Mike swallows hard on the hot, aching flutter in his chest, rubs a thumb on the inside of Chuck's wrist and feels long, cool, scarred fingers curl weakly around his own.

—

Mike doesn't get why he's upset but he's holding his hand anyway. Chuck can't 22 can't the unit can't tell him, he can't say, he's not allowed. He signed a contract, he's not allowed, he can't talk about it. But he's so scared and the surgical scars from the last surgery are still hurting.

"Did somebody beat you up again?" Mike says, agonized by the thought, he's so protective. "Was it—some of the Security guys again?"

Chuck shakes his head. He can't say, he's not allowed. He can't say, he's not—

"—Defective, what are you waiting for?"

"Mr. Kane, the resources we've put into him—"

"Have all been _wasted!_" Kane's hand slams down on the table. Chuck flinches, overactive synapses firing sharp needles of alarm all through his system, and Kane sneers. "You promised me a perfect soldier, not this— _cringing wreck_." He turns away, and he still hasn't even bothered to look Chuck in the eyes, and Chuck can't breathe he feels like he's falling he can't breathe and he's _falling, _thin air whipping around him, lights blurring dizzyingly as he falls. Watching every millisecond uncomprehendingly from inside his glitching, torn-open mind, hearing Kane's voice as he said _ pull anything useful out of its brain and get rid of it, Kane Co. has no time for defective bots— _

He's limp as a ragdoll when he lands, and it probably saves his life. The memory is brief and brutal; an impact, a rolling tumble across rough ground, pain gashing sharply across one of his arms and his back and through his leg and rolling and falling and darkness. Flickers of hours, maybe days, lying motionless and hurting on a pile of trash, feeling the constant shiver of alarms as his mind drifts in and out of consciousness and his body starves and parches and bleeds—

The unit whimpers faintly, somewhere far away, a thin little noise it can't let out as it's lying there on the trash; overridden, silent, motionless. Somebody squeezes its hand. Squeezes _his _hand. _Breathe._ He breathes.

"Rollback inquiry," says a voice, a hand on his forehead. The unit twitches. The rollback program has progressed to 99.3%. "99? Almost there." And then quieter, "...Come on, kiddo, you got this..."

"Yeah you do," says—_Mike_—a different voice, _Mike,_ and Chuck—struggles against their hands as they shove him into a chair, screaming and cursing and crying and _crying _and begging and wailing stupidly for help like a scared kid, whimpering _"Mike, Mike please" _like he's there, like he can help, like anybody is going to help him now.

"The fuck is 'Mike'?" says a voice, and it's just as real, it's just as clear as the hand holding his, it's _real. _Real as the other voice that says "Who cares? Add it to the keywords and let's get this done already before I go deaf, holy shit—"

He doesn't remember the pain, but the sense of utter, glaring _wrongness _as the rollback tries to retrieve memories from that—flashpoint, that bomb-crater, that scorched outline where things have been utterly, purely obliterated from his brain, makes 22 shake, sends fragments of glitchy, pointless sounds spilling out of his mouth. Finally, _finally_, he hears his own voice rasp "—100%, protocol complete—"

And then the unit is upright, thrashing, lashing out, _screaming. _ People try to catch hold of it, the unit puts one of them on the ground, grabs for another one, aiming to dislocate an arm, grapples for a second as the target locks arms with it. Stumbles as another weight hits it in the back. Synaptic errors, overreaction to stressors, it's still screaming, it hasn't stopped. It doesn't want to be thrown away, it doesn't want to die—

"Chuck!" yells a voice next to its ear, and a pair of arms locks around it, pins its arms to its sides. The unit jerks, twisting wildly, squeezes the arms it's still got hold of until someone shouts hoarsely in pain. He can't, he has to get away, they're going to tear its implants out of it and he'll be _lucky _if they kill him first, he can't, it can't, they can't— "It's me, it's _Mike, _It's just Mike—_hhf_—Chuck, please, come on, come on, _please—_"

"Nobody's gonna hurt you, Bright-eyes," says another voice, rough, trying to be calm but grating sharply, and 22 twitches, he's, 22, he's a Skylark, nobody can throw him away any more. "I need you—_hh_, to let go. Let go."

"You're safe," says the voice in his ear, and the unit goes still, panting, trembling all over. It can't—see, the data is invalid input, why does it _hurt _so much? "Buddy, you're—freaking me out, you're _scaring _me, dude, please."

"Let go, 22," says his registration holder, and 22 lets go, one twitching finger at a time.

Two current potential threats. Neither of them attempting to damage the unit. 22 stares at the figure in front of it, struggling to connect what it sees to what he knows; human male, _registration holder, _estimated 35 to 45, _important, _armed, _strong handsome important owner boss father— _The man is combat-trained, making tactical choices; leveraging the unit's irrationality to weaken the combat protocols. Injured. The unit has successfully caused a right lunate dislocation and a left ulnar fracture. He's _hurt, _22 broke his _arm_—

"Error," croaks 22, and sways, staring at—at, at his— "I'm, error, I'm _sorry, _I'm, I'm, I'm, so so so so so so so so—"

"Easy," says the voice near his ear, and it breaks on the word, and the arms around him aren't squeezing, trying to hurt him, they're holding on. The unit is receiving a hug. "Hey, Chuckles, come on. Come back, dude, come on, _shit._ Please, dude, come back."

"_Fffuck_," wheezes another target, another voice, and Chuck whips around, feeling its eyes burn blue, feeling the rage and terror distant and too close both at the same time. Human male, estimated 50 to 65, unarmed, injured. The unit has successfully caused a cracked or fractured rib, unknown location, stunned diaphragm and surface facial trauma.

"Don't worry about him," says the registration holder. He tries to lift his arms, tries to reach out and makes a stifled noise of pain through his teeth, and the unit is going to be sick. "Focus on me, kid. You know where you're at?"

"Location unknown," says 22, but that's—wrong, "—home, I'm home, I'm home, I'm unknown I'm _error, _I'm sorry. Three hostiles, targeting— I'm sorry. I hurt you I'm sorry please don't throw me away, I'll perform the directive I'll be a good, good— I'll do better, don't make me forget again, _please_!"

"God," says Mike, _known entity_, says Mike, choked, still holding on, the unit is receiving a hug. Known entity Mike Chilton. Human male, 19, sneaking into the unit's pod at night to sit with him when he cried. Possibly armed, injuries unknown, chipped one of his front teeth when they were seven and showed it every time he laughed. Combat-trained, shadow-boxing in the middle of the pod, glitching Chuck's screens out, _Mikey_. "We won't, we—you're fine, you're good— I'm so sorry, dude, I should never have let you do this, I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry," repeats Chuck, and shakes the unit's head and reaches up with 22's hand and takes Mike's arm and squeezes and doesn't break it. "I'm. Sorry."

"You're home," says registration—the Duke, says, no, says—22's owner, his _owner, _says— "You're home, 22, you're good now. Nobody's gonna do stuff like that to you. Settle down for me. Breathe."

"Sir please I'll be good for you—"

"Shh," says Rayon, _Rayon, registration holder,_ he took, he rescued, and Chuck broke his _arm_. "Nobody's doin' any of that either."

"...Sir," says 22 again, and stops. Breathes. This time when the unit blinks its eyes, new details make it through; the shadows under Rayon's eyes, the crease at the corner of his mouth, the way his shoulders fall a little in relief, the unit learned to read that. The worried tightness of his jaw and the faint wrinkle between his brows. "Rayon, Mr...Rayon?"

"There you go, Bright-eyes," says Rayon, and quirks his lips in a faint, tight, smile.

"...Mike," says Chuck, and turns its turns its turns its head jerkily and catches the shape of Mike's nose, the fall of his hair. Strange, familiar, forgotten, remembered. Mike lets out a shuddering breath against his shoulder and slumps forward against his back, bumps his forehead against the unit's skull.

"Yeah, buddy," he says hoarsely, and squeezes a little harder, swallows audibly. "Right here. I've gotcha."

"17," says 22, remembering, horrified, and glances back, twisting in Mike's arms. Mike's nose is bloody, his lip is split like Chuck got him in the face with an elbow, and that's bad but he's pretty young, combat-trained. 17 isn't, he's not combat-trained, not young, 17 is a tech, and the unit just _hit him_. "I'm—"

"'S fine," 17 says, and pushes himself up. He sounds a little wheezy, but he manages a smile and 22 sobs, scrubs at his face and sobs again. "Ahh, kiddo. Fuck." He looks past Chuck at Rayon—frowns, worried. "Sir?"

"I'm fine," says Rayon, clear and calm like it's true but it's _not_ . "It's just a—"

"I broke your arms!" 22 says, half-shrieking, and then claps a hand over his mouth, apologies going muddy and hitching through his fingers.

"What?!" says Mike, straightening up, and 22 wants to just—implode, shrink out of existence. He fucked up so bad, he _hurt _Rayon, his registration holder, his—his, his _boss, _Chuck _hurt _him. "Dude, seriously? Are you okay?"

"I just said I'm _fine,_" says Rayon, very _very _firmly. "22, did you get anything?"

"I—_yeah, _but—" Chuck meets Rayon's eyes, falters, then takes a deep breath and makes his voice not break, straightens his shoulders and makes himself not scream. "...Yessir. 87% recovery."

Rayon nods, stands up slowly and picks his left arm up, plucking at his jacket, getting it back in order one-handed. "Good," he says. "And you're…?"

"Fine, sir," says 22, which is a pretty big overstatement, but he—he will be. He'll get there. "I remember—"

He glances back, reminded, and then freezes in places as he catches Mike's eyes. Mike is watching him, leaning toward him, lips slightly apart and eyes fixed on 22's face and just—_intent, _watchful, waiting, and all of a sudden it all hits Chuck at once. Everything comes crashing down on him; warm afternoons, wrestling matches, covert snickering during education modules. Mike making Chuck's bed in the morning because he couldn't stand the mess, Mike diving into a dogpile of fighting kids to pull Chuck out of it, Mike smiling, _Mike._

Mike jerks back when Chuck turns to look at him, and then softens at whatever he sees on Chuck's face, quirking a familiar, rueful grin.

"What, dude?" he says softly, and then goes "_Oof!_" as 22 barrels into him, squeezing hard, making a noise that's half laughter, half sobbing. "Oh—geez, buddy, wow, hey, you okay?"

"_Mike,_" says 22, and holds his hand, grabs his shoulders, pulls him in and holds onto him. "I, _hh_, I mmm, I missed, I missed you s-so much, I—"

"I know," says Mike, and squeezes him back, breathes out in pure relief against Chuck's shoulder and touches his hair so gently he barely feels it. "Yeah, buddy, me too. Ahh, Chuckles, geez..."

Rayon doesn't like hugs, doesn't like 22 to touch him that much, but 22 is holding onto Mike now, and he wants to, wants to hold on and bury his face in his boss's shoulder too. Be safe, feel like, feel—be _home._ He looks over, and maybe Rayon sees some of that in his face because he hesitates and then raises his left hand again, slow and painful, and puts a hand on the back of 22's neck, squeezing a little bit. It feels so good, and he's not pressing but Chuck lets it press him down anyway, bending under it until his face is buried into Mike's shoulder.

"Sorry," Mike says suddenly, quietly. "For, uh. Asking you to do stuff, y'know, you didn't know who I was, it was kinda weird of me, I guess—"

"I know what I want," says 22. And breathes, and breathes in, and takes a breath of Mike's smell, his hair, kisses the side of his neck. Feels Mike shudder. "I know what I wanted— I wanted. Stuff. Before."

"Oh," says Mike, small and strangled, and clears his throat roughly. "Uh—yeah?"

"Yeah," says Chuck, and pushes back past the surgeries and the fall, and the fall, and the long, long fall, to the time when he wrestled Mike just to hold onto him, watched movies for the hundredth time just to press up next to him on the couch. Too young to know what he wanted, exactly, but old enough to know he _wanted_. To know who he wanted to figure it out with. "Yeah."

The hand on the back of his neck pulls away. Chuck blinks, raises his head—Rayon stands back, rolls his shoulders a little. Settles. His glasses are missing, but his face is blank enough it doesn't make a difference, and 22 can't read his expression all of a sudden.

"Well," 17 says. Straightens his tie. Straightens it again. He doesn't look blank, but he does look...kind of unhappy, kind of happy, kind of worried. "Well—good. Well, if you have any issues, you can always call, I can definitely come over for a checkup—"

"What?" says 22. "Come over?"

"To the Burners' hideout," Rayon says. Still even, quiet. "Don't know what the tech situation is over there."

"Oh," says Mike. "Oh, dang, uh...I mean, if you _wanna_—"

"No," says 22.

Rayon blinks, brows furrowing again. He never looks confused, but just for a second, Chuck catches him looking...startled. However brief the flash was.

"22," Rayon starts.

"No, sir," 22 says, stronger this time. "Just because I, I, I, just because I knew Mike, I know Mike, now, I'm not gonna stop! Being, I'm not stopping, I'm a Skylark, sir, you s-s-saved me, my, saved my life, and—" He chokes on the words a little, emotions he wasn't expecting pushing up in his throat, but he manages to finish, "I have a gang, a, I, have a _family_ down here, and it's you guys, and— I like the Burners too but that doesn't mean I. Have to go be a Burner. I won't."

Rayon and 17 stare at him for a long second. 17 is smiling, looking at 22 like he did something good, something really good, warm and proud. Rayon is...blank, still, nothing about his face moving, but his eyes eyes eyes look wrong. Bright, blinking. He nods a second later, and says "If that's how you feel. We'll keep your number for you, 22." and his voice is perfectly steady, and the weird, wet look to his eyes is gone again. He looks away at 17 a second later, and 17 hurries over, bends down and picks up Rayon's glasses, hands them to him so he can painstakingly slide them on with his left hand.

"Walk with me, 17," he says, and looks at Chuck, still under Mike's arm. "Go back to your room and get some sleep," he says, and it's firm, an order. "You need it."

"Yessir," says 22 meekly.

Mike helps 22 walk back from Room 1, because his legs are still weak and glitchy. The unit can hear, feel, can tell Mike keeps opening his mouth and breathing in to say things, and then stopping and closing his mouth again. Whatever he's thinking, he doesn't say it. Just opens the door to 22's room, lets him walk through and just...stands there, in it, like he's waiting.

"...Are you coming or what?" says Chuck, and he sees Mike melt, the relief in his eyes, the same as it ever looked.

Mike helps him take his suit off, not like they did last night, but just helping. Helping him into sweatpants. Mike gets down to his boxers, and then laughs a little when 22 picks up the T-shirt Mike took off and pulls that on instead of his plain white tanktop. It's a little short, but loose around him, and it's soft and well-washed and it's still warm from Mike's body-heat. Something stupid and longing crunches up in Chuck about that, and then un-crunches when 22 remembers, all in a rush—he doesn't have to feel bad, to long for things he doesn't have, because he has them now. And all it cost him was 80% of the organic matter in his body, his brain and—and other things, he doesn't want to think about now. They don't matter now anyway.

They lie down across the bed from each other, but it only takes a few seconds before Mike scoots hopefully a little bit closer, and then closer, and then 22 turns on his side and shifts over and feels Mike come and wrap himself against the unit's back, all in a rush, a warm body pressed up against him from neck to knees, legs thrown between 22's.

"Are you okay, dude?" Mike says.

"My head hurts," says Chuck, grumpy to be grumpy, and Mike snickers and kisses it, nuzzling into the cropped fuzz of his hair. 22 remembers growing his hair out, now, being proud of how long he got it, enjoying the barrier between himself and the world—he doesn't know if he'd like that now or not, doesn't know if he still would like his favorite card-game, cartoon, the things he used to like.

He still likes Mike, though.

"...Remember when we climbed up on top of the cabinets in the playroom?" 22 says. "And I got scared and c-couldn't climb down, and you climbed down and said...said you'd catch me?"

"Maybe," Mike says, soft and blurry against his hair. "Did you kick out one of my front teeth by accident?"

He did, and it settles something in Chuck's chest, that Mike knows, that he remembers. That that memory is right and true.

"Maybe," he echoes back, and Mike laughs a little, presses up against his back and sighs long and slow. For a long time, they just lie still, breathing quietly. 22 is—Chuck is—there's so much, in his head, now. So many good things, and so many bad things, the memories all new and clear and spiraling around in his head. But now, at least, there's something good to hold onto. Now for every painful, humiliating, terrifying memory, there's a memory of his coworkers, calling him "kid" and messing up his hair—a memory of Mike, telling dumb jokes and laughing at them until Chuck had to laugh too. A distant, blurry memory of his mom's hair, curly and gold between his own much smaller fingers, his dad's big, square, knuckly hands swooping down to pick him up.

"...Do you remember the night before I moved out to the barracks?" Mike says, after a long time of quiet. The arm wrapped around Chuck squeezes a little, the hand that was resting on the sheets comes up and presses to his chest instead, taking a handful of the T-shirt's worn-soft fabric and gripping tight. "When I said I had something to tell you—?"

"You said I was your best friend," 22 says, and swallows hard around the strange, painful lump that knots up his throat at that memory, the sudden, painful clarity of it. He remembered it, when he did the recall, but that's not the same thing as..._remembering _it. "And. You'd come find me, when you finished training. You wouldn't forget me."

"Yeah," says Mike. And then he's quiet again, holding on tight.

Chuck rolls over, and Mike ducks his head fast instead of letting 22 see his face. Puts his forehead very gently against one of the unit's collarbones, and rests there, and doesn't say anything else.

—

Mike wakes up early the next morning. 22 feels him jolt awake, because 22 isn't asleep—his dreams are a technicolor whirlwind of new memories and old, clashing and mixing as his brain tries to process the new information he pulled out of the metaphorical trash. The Duke coming for him, leering at him, until he turns into the project manager, until Chuck's dad picks him up and runs with him, until he looks up and it's Mr. Rayon, helping him limp out of the Duke's mansion and smuggling him into the back of a black Buick, where Mike is driving but Mike is driving back to the barracks, he's leaving, and the unit is screaming for him but nobody's listening, just strapping him in—

All the nightmares end the same way. They all come back to that scene, screaming and fighting and being ignored, cold straps being pulled so tight they bite into his skin, and then a sunburst of white agony that blots out everything else. It jolts him awake, every time.

He's awake at five AM, when Mike wakes up, growls at himself, snuggles back in and aggressively goes back to sleep. He's awake again at forty-two past five, at six-ten and six thirty-eight, and he manages to wait until seven in the morning before he can't stand it anymore. He pushes himself up, lets Mike settle sleepily into the warm place where he was lying. Pulls the covers up, and walks out of the room and into the silent hallways.

The unit doesn't remember a whole lot of things about the Research and Development department in Kane Co. When he tries, he just gets the memory of that white burst of blazing, obliterating light, wiping out whatever he might've remembered. Just snatches, here and there—little cubes with some kind of gas stored inside, small round balls with incredibly miniaturized versions of the KaneCo MegaGrazer inside, crawling over—something, they were programmed to eat _something _and he can't remember...

He doesn't remember much, doesn't even know if the bits and pieces he has left would be useful—all he knows is that he keeps thinking about Mike, the Burners, their fight against Kane, stupid and suicidal but what needs to be done. And the guilt and determination are slowly starting to overcome the fear.

22's the only under-25 in the hideout who doesn't have his own car, so he doesn't have any maintenance to do—if anybody else is awake at this time of the morning, they must be out getting their morning maintenance done, because the lobby is empty. 22 wanders over to a fridge, gets a bottle of water, hides in the corner and drinks it and thinks.

He gives himself until he finishes his water, but all the extra time does is make him more sure of himself. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do, and sometimes what you gotta do is go talk to your terrifying, cool, competent boss and ask him stupid questions with not very much information and zero self-confidence.

God, this is such a bad idea. And yet, somehow, here he goes.

22 is aware that it's pushing his luck to go talk to Rayon in Room 1 again. He's also aware that Rayon...cares, likes him, has a soft spot for him. 22...feels things, about that. Like terror, and pride, and confusion, just, a lot of things. Good things, mostly. He's still nervous, though, when he creeps up to the door to Rayon's office and knocks on it quietly.

Rayon buzzes him in after only a second of waiting. He's sitting behind his desk, working with several screens, and he has to know that Chuck is there in the door but he doesn't look up yet.

"...Mr. Rayon?"

Rayon looks up, stops talking to his screens and watches 22 come in. 22 glances down, sees the bandages from under the sleeves of Mr. Rayon's suit—bites his lips and tries not to apologize again, heart all hot and crunched up in his chest.

"I needed to ask, to...to talk to you, about something?" 22 says, and Rayon arches one of his eyebrows. "Uh..."

"Make it snappy, 22," says Rayon.

"Yessir," says 22, and pushes forward, rushes on, "—Sir, I— I'm remembering things, now. Things I worked on, in R&D. They wiped those out a couple of times, over and over and over and over and—" he stops himself, rubs his forehead with the heel of one hand and shakes his head slowly. "—But I can still remember some of it—I need to tell people. How do I tell people?"

Rayon raises his eyebrows, sitting back. "...How do you figure people got any business knowing what you remember?" he says.

"Because it could help," 22 says.

"I suppose," Rayon allows. "But we're in the business of information, 22. If you've _got _information, we shouldn't just be passing it around like it's anybody's business."

"But it's—Kane could—_hurt _people, with the stuff I, I, I remember," says 22, it doesn't make any _sense_. "If I know things that could—_help_, I should, nnh, I should tell, people!"

Rayon considers him for a minute, and then closes the screen he was working in and gives 22 his full attention. 22 resists the urge to shrink from it, just keeps his back straight and his shoulders square and tries to look like somebody who knows what he's doing.

"...I know you've been busy figuring yourself out," Rayon says. "Probably not a lot of time to keep track of politics right now. So let me catch you up.

"The Duke's taken a lot of shots at trying to justify what he did, but after the news got around nobody's buyin', nobody's sellin'. If they are, they're not doing it above the board, and it's not enough to keep him in the position he likes to be in—on top with everybody trying to get in his good graces. As he's headed down, everybody else has got a chance to climb into the space he's leaving behind—we can't afford to do anything too...charitable, right now. Not if we want to keep _our _business floating. You get me, 22?"

"That doesn't—seem right," 22 admits, and Rayon doesn't yell at him, just sits quiet for a second.

"...It's not right," he says finally. "And it's not wrong. It's just business." He sits back in his chair, and settles into his work. "Go for a walk, kid," he says. "One of the boys can let Mike know where you went. You go...get your thoughts together. See me when you figure it out. Kane's not gonna try anything in the next thirty seconds."

The unit does. He goes back to his room, leaves a note for Mike on the spot where the unit was lying, and then very quietly pulls on his suit, his gloves. He straightens his tie and heads out on the knee that Deluxe broke the Duke neglected the unit fixed, and goes out into the city and goes for a walk.

He can walk for a long time. He does walk for a long time, he walks, and he thinks, and he walks. He thinks about the Skylarks, and how they took care of him, and how they care _about _him, and how they can't let him do what he wants to do as long as he's wearing his number. About the Burners, how they're fun and nice and a lot, too much, and his age and frightening, unfamiliar. They run into danger, Mike _looks _for it, challenges— _tear anything useful out of his head and dispose of the rest—_ stands in front of Kane with a target painted on his chest, laughing, and 22 doesn't want to do that either.

It's beautiful, out here. Everything is empty, destroyed and silent, with gashes cutting up through the walls of ancient buildings to show the inside of ruined rooms, cutaways of lives that used to exist. The conduits down from Deluxe cut through buildings, into the asphalt, through broken windows, showing like veins through gashes in skin, and 22 takes off his glove, on an impulse. Holds his mangled hand up toward the outline of a building and lines up the artificial veins and nerves of his hand with the twining pipes, the ragged edges of his skin with the gash cut into a wall.

Further out, toward the border, more houses have been knocked flat to their foundations, the remains picked over by bots and then left to rot. 22 looks around, and thinks about lying on the junk heap. Trash, trash, trash.

...There's something slowly taking shape in the back of his mind, but he's not—he doesn't know if he can understand it yet, if he has it in him, to pull it all together. Everything is still processing and fragmented—old memories, new thoughts, old hope, new fear. The Duke is losing power, Kane is building armies, Mike is standing in the middle of it all burning like a star.

The unit follows orders; walks, steady and unrelenting. 22 feels; reactive, scared, emotion ruling over everything else, surviving and clinging to humanity. And Chuck, newly unburied, fragmented and sore and still not sure who he is...thinks. Walks on, into the Motorcity night.

He's not looking out along the highway, to the distant mountains of the Duke's junkyards, the glow of his floodlights. If he was, he might have seen the floodlights' constant, golden glow flicker, flare, and then, for the first time in years, go dark.


	5. Damaged Goods

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So, uh...what's the plan?"  
"The plan," says Chuck, and looks around at the piles of trash, the scrap metal and damaged goods. "The plan is. The plan—this is mine now."

Chuck walks a long way, for a long time. Miles, on legs that don't get tired, out around the outskirts of old Detroit. Scales ancient roads and then down the rubble where they fell, wanders through empty suburbs and past abandoned businesses.

He's not sure what he's thinking about, just that there's a sense of something coming together as he walks—like something's loading, and if he just walks far enough, leaves everything far enough behind, it'll all fall together.

He's still waiting for that moment, picking his way along a broad stretch of ancient, empty road, when he feels the rumble in the ground under his feet.

He can't see anything that might be causing it, but he can hear it, feel it vibrating up through his legs, getting closer and louder. First the vibration of it, then the sound, a distant, growling roar. It's the sound of engines, and it could be any gang, out for a joyride in the wastes around Detroit, it could be the Burners, it could be, it could be, it _isn't_.

There's no loud music this time, as the fleet of sleek limousines comes roaring up around him, the wind from them blowing up dirt and dust and staggering him back and forth. They go past him in a red and gold wave, engines snarling, and everything is a hazy blur of speed and wind and color—

And then they're pulling away, coming to an idling halt in neat ranks, and the Duke is there.

The unit didn't see him get out of any of the cars, but he must have, because he's _there, _cane swung over his shoulder. Exactly how 22 remembers him, the red jacket and the red glasses and the tapping shiny shoes. For a second 22 is small is young is broken and pulled off the garbage heap, a piece of scrap, being told _that's alright, you don't need a name here._ But he does, he has one, he _is _somebody, and when the Duke takes a step forward, 22 takes a step back and pulls out his weapons array.

"D-d-don't— Don't come any closer," he says, reedy and desperate and breathless. "Leave me alone!"

"Didn't waste any time getting you dressed up, did he?" the Duke sniffs, like he didn't hear, and throws a look up and down the unit, takes in Chuck's whole body in one proprietary, judgmental glance. "Well. It didn't sit well with me, headin' out without getting a little payback for the upstart bot that caused me so much trouble, but I was about ready to do it—until you just came wandering out in the middle of nowhere like you were just _waitin' _for a pickup."

"I'm not," says 22. "I'm no, I'm, no, no, I-I-I-I—_no._"

"If you're not over there on the floor of my ride ready to pay me back inside of...mm..._now,_" the Duke says, "I'm gonna make you wish they never let you off the assembly line."

"No!" says 22, loud this time, sharp and certain and angry and hurt and _terrified_. It's never worked before, and he knows, he he he he knows knows it won't work now. Expects it, when all it does is make the Duke bristle up, shoulders going up and head going down and jaw setting.

"It wasn't a question," he grits out, and hefts his cane like he's going to hit the unit with it, like he's thinking about the best place to hurt him. "I'm not leaving my things behind, no matter how much _trouble _they are. Get in the—"

"I'm not—one of your _things!_" says the unit says 22 says Chuck, as loud and as clear as he can, even with his voice shaking. "I was never supposed to be yours, I'm not a _bot!_"

"Could've fooled me," says the Duke, and tosses his hair back, looks down his nose like Chuck is something he scraped off one of his shoes. "Mouthy little— Get over there, _now_."

"No," says 22, and steps back. "You c— You can— You can't make me."

"Uh-huh," says the Duke, and pulls up a screen. "We'll see about that."

"You can't override me, either!" says 22, but he can feel his voice wobbling. Every nerve in his body is screaming searing shivering with tension, he knows what those screens mean, he's felt them before. "You can't h-hurt me, we took, we cleaned, we fixed what you did t-to me."

"Never knew they programmed you with _jokes_," says the Duke, and hurts him.

It's not the same kind of pain it was before, an override straight to the place his nerves meet his brain and torturing him from there. But it doesn't need to be that kind of pain, it hurts so much either way. The unit screams and screams and drops and screams, to his knees, falls forward and screams and retches. The Duke steps back, lip curling, flicks a shoe off.

"Do you have any idea the amount of _trouble_ you made for me?" he says, and puts a shoe on the unit's chest, shoves him back and down. This side of him isn't the one he likes to show—teeth bared and furious, and the—and his _face, _it's going to hurt now, it's going to hurt so much— And 22 is, Chuck's so _angry. _He doesn't deserve this, he didn't—he's been trying so hard and he didn't do anything wrong and he doesn't deserve this!

"You—ruined, you _ruined _my—_life!_" 22 manages, gasping, and screams again, slams his head back on the ground as the pain shoots back up through him again. It hurts—

...But it doesn't have to.

The unit reaches into its own programming—untouched. Whatever is hurting him, whatever the Duke put in him, it's only hurting his body. He reaches into his programming, flinches as pain washes over him again, screams. Finds his sensory input. Twists.

The pain stops so suddenly it's like a splash of cold water. 22 lies on his back, panting, twitching as his body tries to understand. Hears the Duke make a noise over him, make, make a sound, confused, angry. "Don't pass out on me now," he says, and presses down his heel into the unit's chest. It doesn't hurt. "I'm not hauling your sorry carcass into the car, bot."

"Stop calling me that," says 22. Everything is clear, over the rushing pounding trembling pulse in his ears, his heart rattling against his ribs so hard it makes his whole body shake. The fear is like a white-hot knife; it focuses everything, turns it all into a simple equation. Think fast, solve this, _fight, _and you live. Too slow, too weak, too stupid, and you die. And he's _not _going to die. "I'll—sh, I'll shhh, I'll shoot you."

The Duke stamps down. The unit registers damage. No cracked ribs, but bruising. Pain signals that his brain refuses to register. "I thought I taught you to watch your mouth!"

"You t-t-t-taught me a, a lot of stuff," says 22, and grabs the Duke's ankle with his scarred hand. Squeezes. He's not going to die. He's _not _going to die. "You w—nnh, you wanted, to make me—not a person, you taught me I wasn't one. Shouldn't act like one. But I'm more _hhh, _more _human _than you were!"

The Duke presses his button again—more pain signals. They wash past like water on wax, like oil on chrome, they roll away. "Let go," says the Duke, and there's—he sounds—

"You should have been. Scared of me, sooner," says the unit, and squeezes hard, harder, hard enough the knuckles with skin on them go white and the bones creak in his grip. "You should've been scared, already."

"I'm—you—why would I be—"

"I'm gonna break your leg," says 22, and it feels _good, _it gives the fear snarling, hungry teeth to see the Duke's furious, disgusted sneer turn startled and blank, fear and shock breaking through the disdain. "For. Because. When you h, h, you _hurt _me. For no reason."

The Duke swears and lashes out with his cane; it hits 22's cheekbone and tears the skin, draws blood, cracks the bone. Tissue damage. The unit doesn't flinch. Chuck doesn't let go. He's too scared to be hurt anymore. He wants to scream, and run, and burn up and _fight_. He's not going to die like this.

"They threw me off Deluxe," he says, "but, I, I, I, they, didn't try—they didn't do it to hurt m-me. They didn't care if it hurt. You did, you hurt me. And. _Hurt _me. Just because you could. Because you _wanted to._"

"No— Now, listen—"

"No," says 22, clear and simple, furious with terror, and hurts him back.

He reaches out, finds his comm while the Duke falls back, swearing and howling and clutching at his leg. Makes a call, not knowing who he's calling. Screaming out again, alone and begging for—

"Help," he says, before the call is even done going through. It's hard to be clear, to talk without stuttering and glitching—even when he manages, it comes out in brief, tight fragments, too breathless to scream. "I need, help. At my coordinates. The Duke. I need help!"

"On my way," says the person he called, voices in the background, he doesn't know— The call ends. He called them, they'll come. This time, they'll come. They have to.

The unit is still lying there, panting, when something glints, blurs in his peripheral vision, and Chuck's hand darts up and catches the Duke's fist an inch from his temple. Shoves away and back and sends the man staggering.

"Stop," he says, as clearly as he can—trying to be heard this time, trying to make someone _listen_. Pushes himself up onto his knees, and sees the Duke staring at him, face bloodless and eyes wide. He doesn't look so tall when he's crouching on the ground, one leg broken under him, pale and sweaty and in pain. "You're making me—" it feels strange to say, but good, but true, but honest, finally. "_Angry. _You shouldn't t— _hha, _treat people, t-treat me, like this! What's _wrong _ with you?!"

He has to drag in a breath; whatever the Duke did to him still hurts, pain signals fading but still bouncing off his brain as he drags himself up off the ground. The pain from the punishment protocols would stop as soon as the override did, but this is—it has to be an implant, something, something in him that's hurting him. Chuck hates that, 22 hates that, the unit _hates _that, he's had so many things done to him and put in him and he didn't have a choice, he _never _has a choice. No matter how loud he screams, whatever he tells them, he never has a choice.

"What if I just killed you," 22 says, just to see the, just, his _face, _the fear on the Duke's face, not angry and vicious and victorious and not smirking and smug and touching when he's not, not, not, when he's wanted, he isn't wanted. He's not the only one who's scared, he doesn't just have to cower and let it happen. "What if I. I have, I'm a— _combat _unit, you—_asshole, _I have sparktech in my arms, I have a plasma re-re-re-re-re— I have a plasma converter a _weapon_, I was a combat, a unit a combat unit a weapon a _kid, _I was just a _kid!_"

The Duke doesn't answer that, just watches him, wide-eyed and still like a cornered—like a rat waiting for the chance to bite.

"You could've used, could've used me for a weapon," 22 says, and steps forward, staggers as the unit fails to establish equilibrium. "That would have been _fucked up _but you— You found, something _worse._ "

The Duke lashes out and his staff hits the unit in the knee, the knee that was hurt, the tendons that 22 repaired snap out of place with an awful feeling of sudden cold, painful _wrongness_ and Chuck screams and buckles over. There are more engines now, people yelling, the Duke's people gathering around their boss, somebody is grabbing for 22's arm and he screams and keeps screaming. He screamed last time, he's tried crying and asking them to stop and they hurt him anyway, he's not _doing _this again. He arms his weapons array, a plasma bolt strong enough to melt the asphalt, aims it right at the Duke's face—

"Chuck!" says Mike, and he dives into the unit's side, the shot goes wide. Somebody else's shot misses too, splinters the pavement by 22's face as the Duke's people rush up to protect him. Chuck's shot misses by a mile, hits the road between them; there's a rush of hot wind, an impact that staggers everybody back, but there are men in black suits are closing ranks in front of Chuck, Mike's got his arm and his tall friend, the painter, Dutch has got the other one, steering clear of 22's weapons array but gamely helping him stay on his feet.

"It's okay, buddy, it's okay," Mike is saying, "I gotcha, it's okay."

_At least you came _ this_ time,_ thinks 22, and Chuck feels guilty about, the unit flinches a little at the thought. "It _is_ okay," he says. "'S okay. Max output, he won't be back he won't, won't, won't ever—he won't be able to—"

"You just can't let go of something when you think it's yours, can you?" says another voice, and Rayon it's, Mr. Rayon steps forward out of the line of his men, hands in his pockets like he could lift up his arms if he wanted, if he had to, like they're not hurt at all.

The Duke doesn't answer him. Glares at Chuck, and then at Rayon, then at Mike and his Burners, who are all clustered around 22 like they're ready to fight anybody who gets close.

"I can take care of it," 22 tries to explain again. "I'm a combat u-unit. I can just..." he works his hand around the grip of his weapon matrix, feels the concussive force racing through his veins, trapped and ready for an outlet. Or maybe that's the fear, or maybe it's the anger, they're all tearing around inside him and ripping at his veins. Heat and light and plasma, pain and rage and terror all caged up inside him. "Fix, it. Get rid of him."

"We can't just—kill him?" says Mike, but he sounds angry and hurting and he doesn't sound sure.

"We won't," says Mr. Rayon, cold and hard, like an override. Like the barrel of a gun. "If he turns around and leaves."

The Duke is still for a second, fists working, shoulders tense. 22 stares at him, not breathing while he waits for that rage to snap into something furious and all-encompassing, the screaming and lashing out and _hurting _him. But the Duke turns, and his people catch him, support him and he limps off into the dark. There's a rumble of exhaust, engines roaring away into the night—dwindling into the distance.

There's a long moment of silence when they're gone, and then Chuck's only leg goes out from under him.

"_Fuck,_" he says, whimpers very quietly, and tries and fails and wants to curl up into a ball, hide from the world, but the Burners are all bending down to worry over him and the Skylarks are behind them, staring and murmuring, and his leg hurts—_really bad. _Everything hurts, as the fear breaks like a fever; he's laughing, a little, just for the relief of it. Or maybe sobbing. Or maybe both.

"He's hurt," says Julie, the burner girl, she's got big dark sharp eyes, she's watching him. "You're hurt— Are you okay?"

"He, he broke my knee," 22 gets out, and looks down at his leg, the way it's not bent quite right. The pain is fresh and white-hot, and it's artificial, a projection from fake muscle and tendon and nerves, but that doesn't make it any easier to ignore. 22 is terrified, hurting, the Duke hurt him again, he should never have left the motel—Chuck takes a very, very deep breath and says "...I can fix it, if if if I can get back to the motel, but I can't www—I can't walk."

"_Shoot,_" says Texas, his name's Texas, Chuck saw his car, she was beautiful. He looks sick. "Texas ain't— Jeez."

"Ha," says Chuck, and swallows the fresh burst of hysterical giggles that tries to break out of him. "Ha—! Yeah. _Shoot_."

"Okay, buddy," says Mike, and squeezes him. "Okay. We're gonna get you there, you're gonna be just fine. Okay? You're gonna be fine, Chuckles."

"Chuckles," repeats 22, and tries to smile. His face feels hot and wet, his eyes burn. "...Ha. I remember that."

Then he passes out.

—

The Burners' modded KaneCo bot follows the Duke's caravan of limos all the way to the edge of the dome, hovering at a safe distance, and comes back to report, apparently, that it saw him head through one of the ratholes out of the dome and into the world beyond. Rayon doesn't know if he really believes the man's gone for good—he's been a fixture even longer than Rayon has, since the dome was going up decades ago. But the Duke came from somewhere else, before he set himself up inside the dome; he'll find somewhere else to build himself a mansion and farm trash and drama.

22 is laid up for a solid three days. 17 says the kid's in some kind of healing shutdown, he needs to reboot and put all the things that have happened back where they go in his head—that he probably should have after the memory recall, and 17 should've told him to. Rayon points out that 17 was busy visiting the infirmary after the memory recall, and it's definitely not a bad thing to have the kid resting for a while. He could use the sleep.

The Burners drop by every day he's out. The first time it's just Mike, but the second and third time the other Burners are there too, loitering around the premises and staring over Mike's shoulder and poking at 22's body and then sidling sheepishly away when one of the Skylarks glares at them.

...Because there are Skylarks there too, Rayon's men hanging out in the room, finding excuses to look out for the kid while he's unconscious. Even 69 shows up and settles down in the corner to glower at everybody who gets close—81 swears up and down he walked in and caught the big guy petting 22's hair, but 69 gives a look fit to kill whenever he brings it up, and 81 stops crowing about it after the first time knuckles get cracked meaningfully in his direction.

Rayon checks in once a day, no more and no less. He's resignedly aware that the rest of the motel thinks he's got a soft spot for the kid, and even more resignedly aware that they're not wrong, but that doesn't mean that he's going to sit at the kid's bedside and hold his hand or something. If there was even room with Chilton there every hour of the day. Rayon's got half a mind to charge him for the room.

He doesn't, though. This time, at least, he owes Mike enough he can't begrudge the guy, and it's not like he's poking around or anything. Just sitting by the bed looking mopey and stressed, tapping his feet and bouncing his knee so hard Rayon's surprised he doesn't vibrate his chair clear across the floor. Rayon can cut him a deal for a night or two.

It's early on the fourth day when Rayon gets a call.

He pointedly doesn't coming rushing down; he gets his suit in order, makes sure his cuffs are crisply fastened, takes his daily dose of nanos for his fractured arms. Gets a cup of coffee, and then heads downstairs.

He walks into 22's room, and isn't all that surprised to find Mike sitting on the bed, making out with 22 with all the embarrassingly breathless intensity of a kid who's got more enthusiasm than experience. To his credit, 22 seems to be enjoying himself; he's got an arm thrown around Mike's shoulder and is making a lot of little breathless noises.

Rayon raises his eyebrows and then knocks firmly on the doorframe, and the boys jump apart with a pair of matching yelps in different pitches. Mike's hair is all ruffled and 22's pale cheeks are bright red.

"Sir!" says 22.

"Oh, hey," says Mike. "Uh. Hey. Uh. He's awake."

"I noticed," says Rayon dryly.

"I'm, recalibrating," 22 says, squawky with embarrassment. "My sensors? I'm recalibrating them. Mike's helping me recalibrate them. Good morning!"

"Alright," says Rayon, amused and blank, and pointedly doesn't comment. "Stay here much longer, Mike, I'm gonna start charging you for the room."

"_Sir,_" says 22, appalled.

"Okay, okay," Mike says, laughing, and turns back to 22, leans in to kiss him again. 22 gives a little moan into it and melts again. Well, at least he seems to be pulled together well enough to enjoy himself. Mike pulls away a second later—ducks back in for another kiss, pulls away, steals another one, hungry, the picture of a guy who's settled neatly into the honeymoon phase and is enjoying the hell out of it.

"I gotta go back to the hideout anyway," he says eventually, and pulls himself away with a visible effort, finger-combing his hair back into some kind of order. "Got some new upgrades for Mutt that Dutch was gonna help me set up."

"Oh _cool_," says 22 fervently, and scoots after him like he doesn't even notice he's doing it. "What kinda— I could come and—"

"You got stuff to do here, 22," Rayon says firmly, and 22 jumps like he forgot there was somebody else in the room and then looks chagrined.

"I'll show you next time I come round," Mike promises, and ducks back one more time to give 22 a long, enthusiastic kiss. "I'll see you then. Cool?"

"Ha, uh," says 22, and beams at him. "Cool! Cool. Cool cool cool—" he claps a hand over his own mouth to stop himself, and Mike laughs good-naturedly, shoots him a pair of finger-guns and heads toward the door.

"Oh, Rayon," he says as he heads past. "Thanks."

Rayon hasn't got the slightest idea what he's being thanked for, so he just gives the kid a slow, dignified nod, and apparently that passes muster because Mike grins back at him and strides off down the hallway, hands jammed into his jacket pockets.

"Alright," Rayon says, and turns back to 22, who snaps to attention in the bed. "You're gettin' a checkup. 17 and the MD will be up here shortly."

"I feel fine," 22 protests. "I fixed my leg last time, I can fix it—"

"Rules are rules," Rayon says firmly. "You get in a shoot-out, you get a visit from the doc." Even if the kid actually seems to be doing _better _now than he did before the shoot-out. At least as far as getting words out smooth and in order. He's still got that glitchy stutter, but maybe he'll always have that. It's not like it's hurting anything. "17 can just run a fast scan, but you're getting looked at one way or another. Anything hurt except the leg?"

"I don't think so?" says 22. "Did you take, t—hha, take out, did you _take out _the implant? While I was out?"

"What implant?" says Rayon sharply. "You sayin' there's one in there you didn't know about?"

"Yeah," says 22. "Somewhere. Not from Deluxe, I think it's fffrom the Duke. For hurting me. Uh...dunno where?" he shrugs. "I thought you'd, y'know, y-you'd look at me and find it and take it out and take it, take it out—y'know. While I was asleep."

"Yeah, well, our doc's not in the habit of doing surgery without permission," Rayon says, casual, and 22 blinks like that didn't occur to him. "If you were bleeding out that's one thing, but nobody here has any inclination to do anything to you while you're unconscious, 22."

"Oh!" says 22, and blinks like that's a whole new thought for him to process. "Uh. That—okay. Thanks." He fidgets. "...How's, uh. Your arms? Mr R—ha, Rrray—on?"

"Good as new," says Rayon, and 22 gives him a look that very clearly says he doesn't entirely believe it but isn't going to argue. Rayon raises an eyebrow at him over the top of his glasses, and 22 sighs and puffs his cheeks out, sighing.

"Good," he says. "Okay."

"Good," says Rayon. "I'm goin' for a drive. Don't do anything wild while I'm out, 22. I don't think the boys could handle it."

—

22 doesn't do anything wild. He doesn't do much of anything, the next week or two. That's not a problem—Rayon likes things quiet around the motel, honestly, and with the first few stirrings of people making a grab for the Duke's abandoned property, he doesn't need anything extra to worry about. But his men are worried, he's aware. The kid seems distant, distracted, not like his usual inquisitive self, and he makes a pretty sad sight limping around on crutches while he waits for 17's Deluxe contacts to ship down new materials to patch his knee.

Still, he's been through a lot over the past couple of weeks, and there's every chance he's just processing it. So Rayon gives it a few days, then a few more, a week and a half—and then, with careful forethought and calculated care, he makes his move.

Rayon finds 22 on the roof of the motel, up where the neon of the sign shines through the branches of the tree. He's sitting at the edge, legs dangling—the doctor's got him down to a light knee brace, now, and he swings his leg a little creakily as he stares out over the city.

Rayon comes over and settles down on the edge of the rooftop next to him, and 22 shows no sign of surprise. Barely glances over at him.

"...The boys are worried about you," says Rayon, after a long minute.

"They don't h-have to be," says 22. "I'm seriously okay."

"Well, good," says Rayon.

"Yeah, good," says 22, almost defiantly.

They're quiet for another long while. The city lights twinkle, distant points of multi-colored light. Overhead, the dome stretches like a false sky, faint blue lights twinkling distantly like the memory of stars.

"Seems like you've got a lot to think about, these days," Rayon presses eventually.

22 sighs, drops his eyes from the horizon for the first time and rubs at them with one gloved hand. "I dunno," he says. "After—the Duke..."

"Is that what this is about?" Rayon says, and his voice is steady, he knows, but he can feel his hackles go up. "He say somethin' to you, kid? Whatever he—"

"No," says 22—and then, maybe realizing he just cut off his boss, "—no, sir. Not like that. I'm just thinking about him, leaving. What it means?"

Rayon doesn't answer that, just takes his glasses off and hooks them on the collar of his shirt, moving slow, letting the quiet stretch out. It sounds like 22 has more to say, and sure enough a minute later he sucks in a slightly shaky breath and goes on.

"...I'm...not trash," he says.

Rayon raises his eyebrows. 22 glances at him, eyes flashing blue, and then looks away again. For a minute the neon and the lights shining up from the courtyard below catch the sharp planes of his face and he looks older, a young man instead of a scarred, beat up kid. "I'm not," he repeats, like he's telling himself. "I'm not trash, no matter how—even if he treated, me, and...his other his his his other things, he treated his things, and his people, like trash."

"He owned a lotta junkyards," Rayon says. "Maybe he got in the habit."

"Yeah." 22 frowns out at the bright horizon, the lights of the city center in the distance. "...He doesn't own them now, though."

"No."

"Nobody owns them now."

Rayon opens his mouth to respond to that, and then stops and looks over, taking in the kid's jutting chin, his narrowed eyes. Stubborn, determined. "...So what are you sayin'?" he says slowly.

"Somebody should take care of them," says 22. "Somebody who. Who, who, who, who knows, sometimes, things get trashed that a-a-a-aren't trash. And won't. Treat them like it."

Well, that's...something.

"And?" says Rayon.

"And," 22 repeats. "And what if I...what if I go. Be that person. I could bring people down here—I know people, now, I remember them. People who, who if they're not down here already, th-they'd be willing to leave, if I gave them somewhere to go. Smart people. People Kane c-c-c— People he treats like junk. I could take people from Deluxe. Go through the junkyards and trade, and sell and use the old stuff, melt it down, make new things. Help the Burners. Help you guys. Help Motorcity."

"Paint a target on your chest," Rayon points out, low and steady. "You really wanna deal with that risk?"

"Mike's the only target Kane cares about," says 22, and holds up a hand, brings up a bright blue screen. There's a wanted poster on it: _ MIKE CHILTON, INSUBORDINATION AND CRIMES AGAINST DELUXE: WANTED ALIVE FOR TERMINAL DISCIPLINE. _ "Mike's...my cover. I won't be a gang, I'll be...something else."

Rayon doesn't answer that for a while. There's a couple of knee-jerk reactions fighting for control, and he doesn't let those happen, as a rule. Good way to make stupid choices. A part of him is...not irritated, but unhappy, tense, at the thought of the kid leaving the motel, striking out on his own. He's a _kid, _he's been beat all to hell and back, he still has trouble talking straight without glitching, he can't take care of himself out there.

But that's not objectivity talking, that's...something else. That's the part of Rayon he's been ignoring and resisting, the part that puts a hand on the kid's shoulder when he's upset, shows him how to tie a tie. That part of him isn't objective either.

"So you're resigning," he says.

22 shivers like the words startled him; those big, blue eyes dart to Rayon, his shoulders hunch.

"...Maybe," he says, and flinches like he's waiting for Rayon to hit him. When Rayon doesn't, the kid unflinches just a little and goes on, "I don't want to, I don't wanna leave, you guys are my…" he bites his lip and looks down at the ground below, takes a long, deep breath. "...But I could...c-could, could _do _something. So. I should. Shouldn't I?"

Christ, what's the world coming to, that some sweet kid is looking to Rayon for advice on something like this. Rayon sighs, rubs the bridge of his nose.

"I'm not gonna tell you what you _should _do, Bright-eyes," he says, plain and quiet. "I'm gonna tell you...even if you go off and start fresh somewhere else...we'll have a room for you at the Skylark Motel. And we'll have your back."

"Even if I leave?"

"Even if you leave," Rayon says, and for once doesn't even care if it's giving his word recklessly, if he shouldn't be promising things, if he's let himself get in too deep. "I won't push you out the door, 22. But I'm not gonna stop you, either."

"...Okay," 22 says, barely a whisper, and takes another deep, steadying breath, slow and smooth. "Okay."

"What did you think I'd do?" Rayon says.

"Stop me," 22 says immediately. "K— Keep, keep me."

"Not my job," Rayon says.

"You're my registration. Holder," 22 points out, and drags a hand over the golden scruff of his hair, not looking at Rayon. "It's your job. If it's anybody's."

"Then maybe it's not anybody's," Rayon says firmly, and pushes himself up, dusting imaginary specks of dirt off his pants. "Your choice to make, 22."

—

The Burners meet him where he asks them to, and they listen when Chuck explains, and they don't even interrupt him, even though they look kind of confused.

"So you're sayin' you wanna be a Burner or what?" says Texas after he's done, and 22—and the unit—and Chuck puts his head on one side, thinks about it.

"Nope," he says. "I'm a— I, am, I'm gonna be an autonomous business-owner."

"A huh?" says Texas.

"You mean you run a gang?" says Dutch. "I mean, am I wrong? That's kinda what that means down here."

"I don't have a gang," says Chuck. "Uh. Yet."

"We've already got a gang though," says Mike, hopeful, and smiles at him, and he's, cute and handsome and good, and he does good things, but Chuck's already shaking his head.

"I'll help your gang," he says. "And I like you, and y, y, and, and all of you, you're cool. But I'm not a Burner. Or a Skylark, anymore. Or, I'm both? Or, I'm working with both of you. Y'know?" He straightens the cuffs of his shirt self-consciously, tries not to be nervous when he sees their eyes catch on the flash of his artificial fingers. "I'll take over the junkyards. Let people salvage there, recycle sssstuff. Recycle— I'll, I'll bring people down from Deluxe, I know how, I knew knew knew how, before they dumped me, I remember. There are people up there who need help getting out, and you guys are great but. But you've got, a, Kane's, but, you've got a target on your backs."

"You're not kidding," Julie says ruefully. "So why are you here talking to us?"

"Because," says Chuck. "I guess I'm gonna go, and. And take his mansion. I'm gonna make it mine, because...screw that guy. And I thought. Um." He knots his hands up on the table, rocks a little bit back and forth in his seat. It doesn't help with the nervous energy ricocheting up and down his spine, but it makes it a little easier to say "...It'll be hard going back, so I wanted to know if maybe. Mike would go with me. And you guys too, if you wanted?"

"What, you scared?" says Texas.

"...Yeah?" says 22. It seemed really obvious, logical, but he doesn't know how to respond to that question, the way it seems like it's an embarrassing, shameful thing. "I'm...yeah."

"Oh," says Texas, and blinks like a dog that just got unexpectedly flicked on the nose. Then his brows draw down and he folds his arms. "Well you don't gotta be, 'cause Texas is gonna be there and have your back. Cool? Cool, let's do this."

"Uh—oh!" says Chuck, and then tenses up as Texas throws an arm around his shoulders and starts marching toward the cars. "H_ha—_"

"I'll take him in Mutt," says Mike quickly, and pries 22 out from under Texas's arm. "We'll meet you there, buddy."

The mansion is dark, but not empty. There are people parked in the junkyards, people digging through the empty rooms. 22 knows he'll have to make them leave, but first…

"So weird seein' it with all the lights off," Dutch says, as Chuck climbs out of Mutt and looks up at the mansion's dark windows, the big shiny "D" on the front of it. "So, uh...what's the plan?"

"The plan," says Chuck, and looks around at the piles of trash, the scrap metal and damaged goods. "The plan is. The plan—this is mine now."

He pulls his slingshot and takes aim at the Duke's shiny gold facade, his symbol larger than life on the front of the building. "Stand back."

Texas whoops as the D hits the ground in the mansion's courtyard, cracking in half with an awful _crunch_. Inside the building, people are yelling; faces in the windows, staring down to see who made the noise. The unit takes a deep breath, steadies, opens up his power conduits and makes them pulse and glow, marching forward toward the door.

"This is mine now," he says, and pushes the door open hard enough it bangs off the walls. He's not the Duke, won't be, couldn't ever be, he's not not not— But if there's one thing he learned from the man, it's that you can't back down. You take what you want, and you can't _ever _back down. "Everybody out!"

"Alright man, okay, fuck, cool it!" says somebody in the hall, and takes off past them, hoisting what looks like a pure gold vase under one arm. The unit gives 0.42 seconds of consideration to snatching it back and then Chuck decides he doesn't give a shit and just stalks past the guy as regally as he can, throat dry and hands trembling and head held high.

There are enough rooms here to take in hundreds of people from Deluxe—from Motorcity too, if they want to come, but as ironic as it is, the unit—22—no. Chuck knows a lot more people from his memories of Kane Co tower than he ever got to meet down here. Smart people, frustrated people. People who are tired of being scared.

The displays for the Duke's fancy cars are empty—work-stations, Chuck can almost see them, the framework's there already—plenty of space for whoever wants it, to make and invent and experiment without bots and guards and supervisors breathing down their necks.

The looters have cleared out most of the cheap gold-plated decorations, taking them as they ran, and the paintings are gone—that's good. The last thing Chuck needs right now is that guy's face staring down at him from every wall. He can already feel it, the Duke's hands reaching out of every shadow, those dark corners where he, where he he he—

"Bet he didn't bother to clean up the house systems," Dutch says, and comes up next to Chuck, puts a hand on his shoulder gently. "Hey, man. You good?"

"I'm," 22 says, and shudders. "I'm, not. Really, uh. Thanks."

"Yeah," says Dutch, and squeezes his arm. "Let's get the lights on in here."

"You need people kicked out?" Texas says. "Texas is gonna go turf 'em out." And he cracks his knuckles and takes off into the back hallways, whooping. Julie climbs up the stairs and kicks absently at the throne—Mike comes up on Chuck's other side and rubs a hand up and down his back as Dutch steps away, screens rising up to his hands.

"We can rip this whole thing down," Mike says. "Like, clean it up, change the whole thing."

"Keep the gold, put some blue and green up there," says Dutch absently. "There's people you can hire to do work on buildings and stuff, I bet Rayon know how to get hold of 'em."

"Yeah," says 22. He thinks about the motel, the lobby with its cool lights and friendly chatter. He can do that, here. He can, fucking—tear out the Duke's gaudy guest bedrooms where he— He couldn't— He can take the fear out of those, too, make them clean and safe and ready for people to stay in. Guarantee people a safe place to immigrate down. Sell salvaged materials and use the money to feed his people. Maybe commission some vehicles, armored delivery haulers so his friends can run business and be safe. He could be able to make them _safe._

"The Duke never really sold tech," Julie says thoughtfully, and plops down in the empty throne, peering around with sharp, thoughtful eyes. "So either he hoarded all the good stuff, or he didn't even bother to dig the good stuff out of the junk around here. Present company excluded."

"_Jules_," says Mike, but Chuck's startled into a laugh, and that makes Julie grin at him, dark eyes squinting like a happy cat.

"He liked shiny cars," Dutch says, shrugging, and takes a slow, panning shot of the room, waving Mike out of the way as he turns. "Didn't seem all that interested in anything else. Okay." He collapses the file, waves it towards Chuck, who accepts the transfer. "If Rayon knows somebody, they can have that. See what they're working with."

"Oh, right," says Chuck, and saves the file carefully. "Uh, right. Thanks!"

"Yeah," says Dutch, already wandering, frowning at the video. He taps a few things, and in the video the colors change for him, the red turning to cool blue and warm green.

"This is gonna be a lot, huh?" says Mike, and 22 only jumps a little when he puts a hand on Chuck's shoulder, puts an arm around him.

"Yeah," says Chuck, and turns toward him, lets himself be held for a second. Lets himself take a breath against Mike's hair and then straightens up again. "It's—kinda crazy of me, I guess."

"It's great!" Mike says quickly. "It's pretty great. And, uh. If you need help, we'll be around. You just gotta ask."

It really must be crazy, if Mike is worried. And he is, he can't hide it, he's no good at hiding things. Rayon's better, and he couldn't hide it either.

22's scared too. Chuck can feel it at the back of his throat, shivers along the back of his skull and prickling coldly along his skin. Keeping him sharp, eyes open, ready. It's not going to stop, it's going to be with him, so it's going to work for him. He'll just have to make it work for him.

"Thanks," he says, instead of any of that, because he won't be able to handle it if Mike keeps looking at him like he's a bomb about to blow. "Somebody's gotta do it. Y'know?"

"Yeah," says Mike, and something about the way he smiles back—he does know. Somebody's gotta do it. So—they will.

"Yeah," says Chuck, and lets his mind open up, one scarred process at a time; reaches out to the mansion that used to own him and holds it in the palm of his hand. All around him, the lights flicker on and bathe the room in gold; his, now. Safe. "Okay. Let's get started."

* * *

Raoul Mencia is lying on the cot in his cubicle in KaneCo Research and Development, with a cool rag over his eyes and a pounding headache in his temples, when a contact he deleted more than a year ago pops up on his comm. The picture is of a skinny, gawky young man with an awkward grin, freckles, big hopeful eyes mostly hidden by overgrown blonde hair. And it's also marked _"EXPIRED"_ in big red letters.

Raoul's getting a call from a dead man.

He takes a deep breath and sits up, trying to control the weird rush of fear and hope that hits him—reaches out cautiously and presses accept.

The young man who pops up on his screen is not the gawky kid from the headshot; his hair is cropped short and choppy against his skull, and his face is thin, almost gaunt, with eyes that gleam weirdly and have dark, thick shadows under them. He's wearing a black button-up and he looks more grim and steady than hopeful and awkward. But it's unmistakably the same person.

"Chuck," says Raoul, dazed with disbelief. "Kid— What—"

"Hi Raoul," says Chuck, and when he cracks a cautious smile, the kid Raoul knows shines through again for a second. Behind him there are people moving, men and women in dark Motorcity colors, pulling apart what looks like a huge, metal throne, rolling blue paper onto a stripped wall, moving back and forth with tools Raoul doesn't recognize.

"What the fuck, kid," says Raoul, dry-mouthed, headache forgotten.

"Yeah, I know," says Chuck, and drags a hand through his hair, with a strange, brief flash of silver. "...Got a second to talk?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhhh it's nice to finish a six-year-old project. =u= "Sloppy Seconds" by Watsky is very much recommended listening for this fic by the way--god knows I listened to it six billion times putting the last couple thousand words in. Thank you for reading!


End file.
